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PRACTICAL ETHICS 



BY 

WILLIAM DeWITT HYDE, D. D. 

President of Bowdoin College 




NEW YORK 
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

1892 



s^ 



"*> 



Copyright, 1892, 

BY 

HENRY HOLT & CO. 



THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS, 

RAHWAY, N. J. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

Introduction, ------ i 

I. Food and Drink, ----- 9 

II. Dress, --------19 

III. Exercise, ------ 25 

IV. Work, -------- 32 

V. Property, ------ 40 

VI. Exchange, -------46 

VII. Knowledge, ------ 53 

VIII. Time, -------- 60 

IX. Space, ------- 65 

X. Fortune, - - - - - - ■ - • 70 

XI. Nature, ------- 81 

XII. Art, -------- 89 

XIII. Animals, ------- 98 

XIV. Fellow-men, ------- 104 

XV. The Poor, - ------ n 7 

XVI. Wrongdoers, - - - - - - 127 

XVII. Friends, ------- 137 

XVIII. Family, - - - - - - - - 144 

XIX. State, 157 

XX. Society, -------- 167 

XXI. Self, - - 179 

XXII. God, 194 



PREFACE. 



The steady stream of works on ethics during 
the last ten years, rising almost to a torrent within 
the past few months, renders it necessary for even 
the tiniest rill to justify its slender contribution 
to the already swollen flood. 

On the one hand treatises abound which are ex- 
haustive in their presentation of ethical theory. 
On the other hand books are plenty which give 
good moral advice with great elaborateness of 
detail. Each type of work has its place and 
function. The one is excellent mental gymnastic 
for the mature; the other admirable emotional 
pabulum for the childish mind. Neither, however, 
is adapted both to satisfy the intellect and quicken 
the conscience at that critical period when the youth 
has put away childish things and is reaching out after 
manly and womanly ideals. 

The book which shall meet this want must have 
theory ; yet the theory must not be made obtrusive, 
nor stated too abstractly. The theory must be 
deeply imbedded in the structure of the work; and 
must commend itself, not by metaphysical deduction 
from first principles, but by its ability to compre- 



VI PREFACE. 

hend in a rational and intelligible order the con- 
crete facts with which conduct has to do. 

Such a book must be direct and practical. It 
must contain clear-cut presentation of duties to be 
done, virtues to be cultivated, temptations to be 
overcome, and vices to be shunned : yet this must be 
done, not by preaching and exhortation, but by 
showing the place these things occupy in a coherent 
system of reasoned knowledge. 

Such a blending of theory and practice, of faith 
and works, is the aim and purpose of this book. 

The only explicit suggestions of theory are in the 
introduction (which should not be taken as the first 
lesson) and in the last two chapters. Religion is 
presented as the consummation, rather than the 
foundation of ethics; and the brief sketch of re- 
ligion in the concluding chapter is confined to those 
broad outlines which are accepted, with more or less 
explicitness, by Jew and Christian, Catholic and 
Protestant, Orthodox and Liberal. 

The fact of sex is so fundamental to life and con- 
duct, and its possible perversions are so fatal, that no 
account of ethics is complete without some very 
plain words on the subject. On the other hand it is 
unwise to intrust a subject so personal and delicate 
to the vicissitudes of a public class room. Instruc- 
tion on this subject is the imperative duty of all 
parents to their children, and an opportunity which 
every conscientious teacher will employ whenever 
intimacy and confidence will warrant it. In place 



PREFACE. Vll 

of a detailed discussion of the subject in the body 
of the book, which my plan calls for, I will briefly 
indicate here the points which parents, and, as far 
as is practicable, teachers should go over in private 
with those intrusted to their care. 

Parents should recognize the fact that very young 
children frequently fall into the habit of exciting 
the sexual passions in entire innocence, merely as 
a means of awakening feelings which to them have 
no significance beyond the immediate agreeableness 
of physical sensation. The parent who does not 
keep a sharp watch over the child from the earliest 
years with reference to this matter, who does not 
explain in simple terms the danger and ruin the 
practice, if continued and made habitual, will bring, 
and who fails from the very first to secure the confi- 
dence of the child on this point, runs a fearful risk 
of seeing the child grow up enfeebled in body, 
mind, and will, and destined to fall before the first 
temptation to more open, but not more fatal or 
degrading, sexual vices. 

Between the ages of five and ten, the most the 
parent can do is to answer the questions prompted 
by childish curiosity in such a way as to impress 
the child with the honorableness and sacredness of 
the sexual nature as the source of life. The parent 
should welcome rather than evade such questions. 
The child who is unwilling to talk freely with 
father, mother, or some mature and trusted friend 
about everything that concerns the physical nature, 
is exposed to serious physical as well as moral dan- 



Vlll PREFACE. 

gers. Pure water is not the absence of water, but 
water without admixture of foreign materials. Pure 
gold is not the absence of gold, but gold without 
alloy. And the pure boy or girl is not the boy or 
girl who has, or pretends to have, no interest or 
curiosity about the fact of sex ; but the boy or girl 
who thinks of these things honorably, and speaks of 
them frankly without coarseness or false modesty. 

As soon as it can be understood, the parent should 
take occasion to explain in full the provision nature 
has made for the slow and gradual development of 
the sexual powers, and for the removal of superflu- 
ous substances at proper intervals, so that the youth 
will never be tempted to excite prematurely the 
sexual nature by impure thoughts and indecent 
acts, or from groundless apprehensions to betake 
himself to quacks. fAt the same time the mind and 
heart must be fortified against obscene books, pic- 
tures, and conversation ; for unless barriers are 
erected within the mind and heart, no external pro- 
tection will avail.) 

As they approach maturity, young people should 
be taught to look forward to marriage, as the union 
of the whole nature, body, mind, and heart, of man 
and woman in life-long respect and helpfulness and 
love. They should be taught that all sexual rela- 
tions in which one cannot deliberately accept the 
consequences of such connection for both parties, 
for offspring, and for society, are cruel to another 
and degrading to self. They should be made to 
see that this principle confines sexiral connection 



PREFACE. IX 

strictly to marriage ; and within the marriage rela- 
tion to such moderation and self-control as is essen- 
tial to the highest bodily and mental vigor both of 
parents and offspring. They should be made to 
feel that any violation of this principle is a sacrifice 
of the human to the brutal; of the spirit to the 
flesh; of the permanent well-being of the soul to 
the transient pleasure of the body. They should be 
impressed in advance with the fact that man and 
woman are too great, too noble, too akin to the 
divine to find permanent satisfaction in the merely 
sensuous nature, perverted from its natural and 
normal end. They should be made to realize that 
any attempt to find permanent satisfaction in mere 
sensuous enjoyment is sure to end in loathing and 
disgust. They should be taught that the effort to 
lead another to become the instrument of such grat- 
ification, at the sacrifice of character, reputation, 
and social standing, is a crime as much more cruel 
than murder, as is life-long shame and degradation 
more to be shunned than sudden and honorable 
death. 

WILLIAM DeWITT HYDE. 

Bowdoin College, 

Brunswick, Me. May 10, 1892. 



OUTLINE OF 



ISP See Last 



Object. 



Food and drink, . 
Dress, . . 
Exercise, . 
Work, . . 
Property, . 
Exchange, . 
Sex, . . . 
Knowledge, 
Time, . . 
Space, . . 
Fortune, 
Nature, . . 
Art, . . . 
Animals, . 
Fellow-men, 
The Poor, . 
Wrong-doers, 
Friends, 
Family, . . 
State, . . 
Society, 
Self, . . . 
God, . . . 



Duty. 



Vigor, .... 

Comeliness, . . 

Recreation, . . 
Self-support, 

Provision, . . 
Equivalence, 

Reproduction, . 

Truth, . . . 

Co-ordination, . 

System, . . . 

Superiority, . . 

Appreciation, . 

Beauty, . . . 

Consideration, . 

Fellowship, . . 

Help, . . . . 

Justice, . . . 

Devotion, . . 
Membership, 

Organization, . 

Co-operation, . 

Realization, . . 

Obedience, . . 



Virtue. 



Temperance, 
Neatness, 
Cheerfulness 
Industry, . 
Economy, 
Honesty, « 
Purity, 
Veracity, . 
Prudence, 
Orderliness, 
Courage, . 
Sensitiveness, 
Simplicity, 
Kindness, 
Love, . . 
Benevolence, 
Forgiveness, 
Fidelity, . . 
Loyalty, . . 
Patriotism, . 
Public Spirit, 
Conscientiousness 
Holiness, 



Reward. 



Health, . . 

Respectability, 

Energy, . 

Wealth, . 

Prosperity, 

Self-respect, 

Sweetness, 

Confidence, 

Harmony, 

Efficiency, 

Honor, 

Inspiration, 

Refinement, 

Tenderness, 

Unity, 

Sympathy, 

Reformation 

Affection, 

Home, 

Civilization, 

Freedom, 

Character, 

Life, . . 



PRACTICAL ETHICS. 



Paragraph of Introduction. 



XI 



Temptation. 


Vice of Defect. 


Vice of Excess. 


Appetite, . . . 


Asceticism, . . 


Intemperance, . 


Vanity, . . . 


Slovenliness, 


Fastidiousness, . 


Excitement, . . 


Morbidness, 


Frivolity, . . . 


Ease, .... 


Laziness, . . . 


Overwork, . . 


Indulgence, . . 


Wastefulness, . 


Miserliness, . . 


Gain, .... 


Dishonesty, . . 


Compliance, . . 


Lust, .... 


Prudery, . . . 


Sensuality, . . 


Ignorance, . . 


Falsehood, . . 


Gossip, . . . 


Dissipation, . . 


Procrastination, 


Anxiety, . . 


Disorder, . . . 


Carelessness, 


Red Tape, , . 


Risk, .... 


Cowardice, . . 


Gambling, . . 


Utility, .... 


Obtuseness, . . 


Affectation, . . 


Luxury, . . . 


Ugliness, . . . 


Ostentation, 


Neglect, . . . 


Cruelty, . . . 


Subjection, . . 


Indifference, . . 


Selfishness, . . 


Sentimentality, . 


Alienation, . . 


Niggardliness, . 


Indulgence, . . 


Vengeance, . . 


Severity, . . . 


Lenity, . . . 


Betrayal, . . . 


Exclusiveness, . 


Effusiveness, 


Independence, 


Self-sufficiency, 


Self-obliteration, 


Spoils, .... 


Treason, . . . 


Ambition, . . 


Self-interest, . . 


Meanness, . . 


Officiousness, . 


Pleasure, . . . 


Unscrupulousness 


Formalism, . . 


Self-will, . . . 


Sin, .... 


Hypocrisy, . . 



Penalty. 



Disease. 

Contempt. 

Debility. 

Poverty. 

Want. 

Degradation. 

Bitterness. 

Distrust. 

Discord. 

Obstruction. 

Shame. 

Stagnation. 

Vulgarity. 

Brutality. 

Strife. 

Antipathy. 

Perversity. 

Isolation. 

Loneliness. 

Anarchy. 

Constraint. 

Corruption, 

Death. 



INTRODUCTION. 



ETHICS is the science of conduct, and the art of 
life. 

Life consists in the maintenance of relations; it 
requires continual adjustment ; it implies external 
objects, as well as internal forces. Conduct must 
have materials to work with ; stuff to build charac- 
ter out of; resistance to overcome; objects to con- 
front. 

These objects nature has abundantly provided. 
They are countless as the sands of the seashore, 
or the stars of heaven. In order to bring them within 
the range of scientific treatment we must classify 
them, and select for study those classes of objects 
which are most essential to life and conduct. Each 
chapter of this book presents one of these funda- 
mental objects with which life and conduct are im- 
mediately concerned. 

A great many different relations are possible be- 
tween ourselves and each one of these objects. Of 
these many possible relations some would be injuri- 
ous to ourselves; some would be destructive of the 
object. Toward each object there is one relation, 
and one only, which at the same time best promotes 



2 INTRODUCTION. 

the development of ourselves and best preserves the 
object's proper use and worth. The maintenance 
of this ideal union of self and object is our duty 
with reference to that object. 

Which shall come first and count most in deter- 
mining this right relation, self or object, depends on 
the character of the object. 

In the case- of inanimate objects, such as food, 
drink, dress, and property, the interests of the self 
are supreme. Toward these things it is our right 
and duty to be sagaciously and supremely selfish. 
When persons and mere things meet, persons have 
absolute right of way. 

When we come to ideal objects, such as knowl- 
edge, art, Nature, this cool selfishness is out of place. 
The attempt to cram knowledge, appropriate nature, 
and "get up" art, defeats itself. These objects 
have a worth in themselves, and rights of their own 
which we must respect. They resent our attempts 
to bring them into subjection to ourselves. We 
must surrender to them, we must take the attitude 
of humble and self-forgetful suitors, if we would win 
the best gifts they have to give, and claim them as 
our own. 

As we rise to personal relations, neither appropria- 
tion nor surrender, neither egoism nor altruism, nor 
indeed any precisely measured mechanical mixture 
of the two, will solve the problem. Here the recog- 
nition of a common good, a commonwealth in which 
each person has an equal worth with every other, is 
the only satisfactory solution. "Be a person, and 



INTRODUCTION. 3 

respect the personality of others," is the duty in 
this sphere. 

As we approach social institutions we enter the 
presence of objects which represent interests vastly 
wider, deeper, more enduring than the interests of 
our individual lives. The balance, which was evenly 
poised when we weighed ourselves against other 
individuals, now inclines toward the side of these 
social institutions, without which the individual 
life would be stripped of all its worth and dig- 
nity, apart from which man would be no longer 
man. Duty here demands devotion and self- 
sacrifice. 

Finally, when we draw near to God, who is the 
author and sustainer of individuals, of science and 
art and nature, and of social institutions, then the 
true relation becomes one of reverence and worship. 

In each case duty is the fullest realization of 
self and object. Whether self or the object shall 
be the determining factor in the relation depends 
on whether the object in question has less, equal, 
or greater worth than the individual self. 

If we do our duty repeatedly and p^rseveringly in 
any direction, we form the habit of doing it, learn 
to enjoy it, and acquire a preference for it. This 
habitual preference for a duty is the virtue corre- 
sponding to it. 

Virtue is manliness or womanliness. It is the 
steadfast assertion of what we see to be our duty 
against the solicitations of temptation. Virtue is 
mastery ; first of self, and through self-mastery, the 



4 INTRODUCTIOX. 

mastery of the objects with which we come in 
contact. 

Since duty is the maintenance of self and its 
objects in highest realization, and virtue is constant 
and joyous fidelity to duty, it follows that duty 
and virtue cannot fail of that enlargement and en- 
richment of life which is their appropriate reward. 

The reward of virtue will vary according to the 
duty done and the object toward which it is 
directed. The virtues which deal with mere things 
will bring as their rewards material prosperity. The 
virtues which deal with ideal objects will have 
their reward in increased capacities, intensified 
sensibilities, and elevated tastes. The virtues which 
deal with our fellow-men will be rewarded by 
enlargement of social sympathy, and deeper tender- 
ness of feeling. The virtues which are directed 
toward family, state, and society, have their reward 
in that exalted sense of participation in great and 
glorious aims, which lift one up above the limitations 
of his private self, and can make even death 
sweet and beautiful — a glad and willing offering to 
that larger social self of which it is the individual's 
highest privilege to count himself a worthy and 
honorable member. 

Life, however, is not this steady march to victory, 
with beating drums and flying banners, which, for 
the sake of continuity in description, we have thus 
far regarded it. There are hard battles to fight ; 
and mighty foes to conquer. We must now return 
to those other possible relations which we left w r hen 



INTRODUCTION. 5 

we selected for immediate consideration that one 
right relation which we call duty. 

Since there is only one right relation between self 
and an object, all others must be wrong. These 
other possible relations are temptations. Tempta- 
tion is the appeal of an object to a single side of our 
nature as against the well-being of self as a whole. 
Each object gives rise to many temptations. "Broad 
is the way that leadeth to destruction. " 

-Just as duty performed gives rise to virtue, so 
temptation, yielded to, begets vice. Vice is the 
habitual yielding to temptation. 

Temptations fall into two classes. Either we are 
tempted to neglect an object, and so to give it too 
little influence over us; or else we are tempted 
to be carried away by an object, and to give it an 
excessive and disproportionate place in our life. 
Hence the resulting vices fall into two classes. 
Vices resulting from the former sort of temptation 
are vices of defect. Vices resulting from the latter 
form of temptation are vices of excess. As one of 
these temptations is usually much stronger than the 
other, we will discuss simply the strongest and 
most characteristic temptation in connection with 
each object. Yet as both classes of vice exist with 
reference to every object, it will be best to consider 
both. 

Vice carries its penalty in its own nature. Being 
a perversion of some object, it renders impossible 
that realization of ourselves through the object, or 
in the higher relations, that realization of the object 



6 INTRODUCTION. 

through us, on which the harmony and completeness 
of our life depends. In the words of Plato: '■ Virtue 
is the health and beauty and well-being of the soul, 
and vice is the disease and weakness and deformity 
of the soul." 

Each chapter will follow the order here devel- 
oped. The outline on pp. x, xi shows the logical 
framework on which the book is constructed. Un- 
der the limitations of such a table, confined to a 
single term in every case, it is of course impossible 
to avoid the appearance of artificiality of form and 
inadequacy of treatment. This collection of dry 
bones is offered as the easiest way of exhibiting at a 
glance the conception of ethics as an organic whole 
of interrelated members : a conception it would be 
impossible to present in any other form without 
entering upon metaphysical inquiries altogether 
foreign to the practical purpose of the book. 



PRACTICAL ETHICS. 



PRACTICAL ETHICS. 



CHAPTER I. 

jfoofc anfc H)nnft* 

THE foundations of life, and therefore the first 
concerns of conduct, are food and drink. Other 
things are essential if we are to live comfortably and 
honorably. Food and drink are essential if we are to 
live at all. In order that we may not neglect these 
important objects, nature has placed on guard over 
the body two sentinels, hunger and thirst, to warn 
us whenever fresh supplies of food and drink are 
needed. 

THE DUTY. 

Body and mind to be kept in good working 
order. — In response to these warnings it is our 
duty to eat and drink such things, in such quanti- 
ties, at such times, and in such ways as will render 
the body the most efficient organ and expression of 
the mind and will. 

Hygiene and physiology, and our own experience 
and common sense, tell us in detail what, when, and 
how much it is best for us to eat and drink. Ethics 
presupposes this knowledge, and simply tells us 



16 FOOD AND DRINK. 

that these laws of hygiene and physiology are our 
best friends ; and that it is our duty to heed what 
they say. 

THE VIRTUE. 

Temperance is self-control. — These sentinels 
tell us when to begin ; but they do not always tell 
us when to leave off : and if they do, it sometimes 
requires special effort to heed the warning that they 
give. The appetite for food and drink, if left to it- 
self, would run away with us. Our liking for what 
tastes good, if allowed to have its own way, would 
lead us to eat and drink such things and in such 
quantities as to weaken our stomachs, enfeeble our 
muscles, muddle our brains, impair our health, and 
shorten our lives. Temperance puts bits into the 
mouth of appetite ; holds a tight rein over it ; com- 
pels it to go, not where it pleases to take us, but 
where we see that it is best for us to go ; and trains 
it to stop when it has gone far enough. 

Virtue means manliness. Temperance is a virtue 
because it calls into play that strong, firm will 
which is the most manly thing in us. The temper- 
ate man is the strong man. For he is the master, 
not the slave of his appetites. He is lord of his 
own life. 

THE REWARD. 

The temperate man has all his powers per- 
petually at their best. — Into work or play or study 
he enters with the energy and zest which come of 
good digestion, strong muscles, steady nerves, and a 



THE TEMPTATION. I* 

clear head. He works hard, plays a strong game, 
thinks quickly and clearly ; because he has a surplus 
of vitality to throw into whatever he undertakes. 
He prospers in business because he is able to pro- 
secute it with energy. He makes friends because 
he has the cheerfulness and vivacity which is the 
charm of good-fellowship. He enjoys life because 
all its powers are at his command. 

THE TEMPTATION. 

The pleasures of taste an incidental good, 
but not the ultimate good.— Food tastes good to 
the hungry, and to the thirsty drinking is a keen 
delight. This is a kind and wise provision of 
nature; and as long as this pleasure accompanies 
eating and drinking in a normal and natural way it 
aids digestion and promotes health and vigor. The 
more we enjoy our food the better; and food, well- 
cooked, well-served, and eaten in a happy and 
congenial company, is vastly better for us than the 
same food poorly cooked, poorly served, and de- 
voured in solitude and silence. 

Yet it is possible to make this pleasure which 
accompanies eating and drinking the end for the 
sake of which we eat and drink. The temptation 
is to eat and drink what we like and as much as we 
like ; instead of what we know to be best for us. 

THE VICE OF DEFECT. 

The difference between temperance and 
asceticism. — Asceticism looks like temperance. 



12 FOOD AND DRINIC. 

People who practice it often pride themselves upon 
it. But it is a hollow sham. And it has done 
much to bring discredit upon temperance, for which 
it tries to pass. What then is the difference be- 
tween temperance and asceticism ? Both control 
appetite. Both are opposed to intemperance. But 
they differ in the ends at which they aim. Tem- 
perance controls appetite for the sake of greater 
life and health and strength. Asceticism is the 
control of appetite merely for the sake of control- 
ling it. Asceticism, in shunning the evils to which 
food and drink may lead, misses also the best bless- 
ings they are able to confer. The ascetic attempts 
to regulate by rule and measure everything he eats 
and drinks, and to get along with just as little as 
possible, and so he misses the good cheer and 
hearty enjoyment which should be the best part of 
every meal. 

Let us be careful not to confound sour, lean, 
dyspeptic asceticism with the hale, hearty virtue of 
temperance. Asceticism sacrifices vigor and vitality 
for the sake of keeping its rules and exercising self- 
control. Temperance observes the simple rules of 
hygiene and common sense for the sake of vigor 
and vitality; and sacrifices the pleasures of the 
palate only in so far as it is necessary in order to 
secure in their greatest intensity and permanence 
the larger and higher interests of life. 



THE VICES OF EXCESS. 13 



THE VICES OF EXCESS. 



Intemperance in eating is gluttony. Intem- 
perance in drinking leads to drunkenness. — 

Instead of sitting in the seat of reason and driving 
the appetites before him in obedience to his will, 
the glutton and the drunkard harness themselves 
into the wagon and put reins and whip into the 
hands of their appetites. 

The glutton lives to eat ; instead of eating to 
live. This vice is so odious and contemptible that 
few persons give themselves up entirely to gluttony. 
Yet every time we eat what we know is not good 
for us, or more than is good for us, we fall a victim 
to this loathsome vice. 

The drunkard is the slave of an unnatural 
thirst. — Alchoholic drink produces as its first effect 
an excitement and exhilaration much more intense 
than any pleasure coming from the normal gratifica- 
tion of natural appetite. This exhilaration is pur- 
chased at the expense of stimulating the system to 
abnormal exertion. This excessive action of the 
system during intoxication is followed by a corre- 
sponding reaction. The man feels as much worse 
than usual during the hours and days that follow 
his debauch, as he felt better than usual during the 
brief moments that he was taking his drinks. This 
depression and disturbance of the system which 
follows indulgence in intoxicating drink begets an 
unnatural and incessant craving for a repetition of 
the stimulus; and so in place of the even, steady 



14 FOOD AND DRINK, 

life of the temperate man, the drinking man's life is 
a perpetual alternation of brief moments of un- 
natural excitement, followed by long days of un- 
natural craving and depression. The habit of in- 
dulging this unnatural craving steals upon a man 
unawares ; it occupies more and more of his 
thought ; takes more and more of his time and 
money, until he is unable to think or care for 
anything else. It becomes more important to him 
than business, home, wife, children, reputation, or 
character ; and before he knows it he finds that his 
will is undermined, reason is dethroned, affection is 
dead, appetite has become his master, and he has 
become its beastly and degraded slave. 

Total abstinence the only sure defense. — 
This vice of intemperance is so prevalent in the com- 
munity, so insidious in its approach, so degrading 
in its nature, so terrible in its effects, that the only 
absolutely and universally sure defense against it is 
total abstinence. A man may think himself strong 
enough to stop drinking when and where he pleases ; 
but the peculiar and fatal deception about intoxicat- 
ing drink is that it makes those who become its vic- 
tims weaker to resist it with every indulgence. It 
enfeebles their wills directly. The fact that a man 
can stop drinking to-day is no sure sign that he can 
drink moderately for a year and stop then. At the 
end of that time he will have a different body, a 
different brain, a different mind, a different will from 
the body and mind and will he has to-day, and would 
have after a year of abstinence. 



THE VICES OF EXCESS. 15 

As we have seen, with every natural and healthy 
exercise of our appetites and faculties moderation is 
preferable to abstinence. It is better to direct 
them toward the ends they are intended to accom- 
plish that to stifle and suppress them. But the 
thirst for intoxicating drink is unnatural. It 
creates abnormal cravings; it produces diseased 
conditions which corrupt and destroy the very 
powers of nerve and brain on which the faculties 
of reason and control depend. " Touch not, taste 
not, handle not," is the only rule that can insure 
one against the fearful ravages of this beastly and in- 
human vice. 

Responsibility for social influence.— A strong 
argument in favor of abstinence from intoxicating 
drink is its beneficial social influence. If there are 
two bridges across a stream, one safe and sure, 
the other so shaky and treacherous that a large pro- 
portion of all who try to cross over it fall into the 
stream and are drowned ; the fact that I happen to 
have sufficiently cool head and steady nerves to walk 
over it in safety does not make it right for me to 
do so, when I know that my companionship and 
example will lead many to follow who will certainly 
perish in the attempt. 

Mild wines and milder climates may render the 
moderate use of alchoholic drinks comparatively 
harmless to races less nervously organized than ours. 
And there doubtless are individuals in our midst 
whose strong constitution, phlegmatic temperament, 
or social training enable them to use wine daily for 



1 6 FOOD AND DRINK. 

years without appreciable injury. They can walk 
with comparative safety the narrow bridge. There 
are multitudes who cannot. There are tens of thou- 
sands for whom our distilled liquors, open saloons, 
and treating customs, combined with our trying cli- 
mate and nervous organizations, render moderate 
drinking practically impossible. They must choose 
between the safe and sure way of total abstinence, 
or the fatal plunge into drunkenness and disgrace. 
And if those who are endowed with cooler heads 
and stronger nerves are mindful of their social duty 
to these weaker brethren, among whom are some 
of the most generous and noble-hearted of our ac- 
quaintances and friends, then for the sake of these 
more sorely tempted ones, and for the sake of their 
mothers, wives, and sisters to whom a drunken son, 
husband, or brother is a sorrow worse than death, 
they will forego a trifling pleasure in order to avert 
the ruin that their example would otherwise help 
to bring on the lives, fortunes, and families of 
others. 

Fatal fascination of the opium habit.— What 
has been said of alcoholic drink is equally true of 
opium. The habit of using opium is easy to form 
and almost impossible to break. The secret work- 
ings of this poison upon the mind and will of its 
victim are most insidious and fatal. 

Tobacco a serious injury to growing persons. 
— On this point all teachers are unanimous. Statis- 
tics taken at the naval school at Annapolis, at Yale 
College, and elsewhere, show that the use of 



THE P EX A LTV. 17 

tobacco is the exception with scholars at the 
head, and the rule with scholars at the foot of 
the class. 

Shortly after we began to take statistics on this 
point in Bowdoin College I asked the director of 
the gymnasium what was the result with the Fresh- 
man class? " Oh," he said, " the list of the smokers 
is substantially the same as that which was reported 
the other day for deficiencies in scholarship." A 
prominent educator, who had given considerable at- 
tention to this subject, after spending an hour in my 
recitation room with a class of college seniors, indi- 
cated with perfect accuracy the habitual and exces- 
sive smokers, simply by noting the eye, manner, and 
complexion. 

Tobacco, used in early life, tends to stunt the 
growth, weaken the eyes, shatter the nervous system, 
and impair the powers of physical endurance and 
mental application. Xo candidate for a college 
athletic team, or contestant in a race, would think 
of using tobacco while in training. Every man who 
wishes to keep himself in training for the highest 
prizes in business and professional life must guard 
his early years from the deterioration which this 
habit invariably brings. 

THE PENALTY. 

These vices bring disease and disgrace. — 

These vices put in place of physical well-being the 
gratification of a particular taste and appetite. 
Hence they bring about the abnormal action of 



1 8 FOOD AND DRINK. 

some organs at the expense of all the rest ; and this 
is the essence of disease. 

A diseased body causes a disordered mind and an 
enfeebled will. The excessive and over-stimulated 
activity of one set of organs involves a correspond- 
ing defect in the activity and functions of the other 
faculties. The glutton or drunkard neglects his 
business ; loses interest in reading and study ; fails to 
provide for his family; forfeits self-respect; and 
thus brings upon himself poverty and wretchedness 
and shame. He sinks lower and lower in the social 
scale ; grows more and more a burden to others and 
a disgrace to himself; and at last ends a worthless 
and ignominious life in an unwept and dishonored 
grave. 



CHAPTER II. 

2>ress* 

NEXT in importance to food and drink stand 
clothing and shelter. Without substantial and per- 
manent protection against cold and rain, without 
decent covering for the body and privacy of life, 
civilization is impossible. The clothes we wear ex- 
press the standing choices of our will ; and as clothes 
come closer to our bodies than anything else, 
they stand as the most immediate and obvious ex- 
pression of our mind. " The apparel oft proclaims 
the man." 

THE DUTY, 

Attractive personal appearance.— Clothes that 
fit, colors that match, cosy houses and cheery 
rooms cost little more, except in thought and at- 
tention, than ill-fitting and unbecoming garments 
and gloomy and unsightly dwellings. Attractive- 
ness of dress, surroundings, and personal appearance 
is a duty ; because it gives free exercise to our higher 
and nobler sentiments; elevates and enlarges our 
lives ; while discomfort and repulsiveness in these 
things lower our standards, and drive us to the 
baser elements of our nature in search of cheap 
forms of self-indulgence to take the place of that 

19 



20 DRESS. 

natural delight in attractive dress and surroundings 
which has been repressed. Both to ourselves and 
to our friends we owe as much attractiveness of 
personal surroundings and personal appearance as a 
reasonable amount of thought and effort and ex- 
penditure can secure. 

THE VIRTUE. 

Neatness inexpensive and its absence inex- 
cusable. — No one is so poor that he cannot afford 
to be neat. No one is so rich that he can afford to 
be slovenly. Neatness is a virtue, or manly quality ; 
because it keeps the things we wear and have about 
us under our control, and compels them to express 
our will and purpose. 

THE REWARD. 

Dress an indication of the worth of the 
wearer. — Neatness of dress and personal appearance 
indicates that there is some regard for decency and 
propriety, some love of order and beauty, some 
strength of will and purpose inside the garments. 
If dress is the most superficial aspect of a person, 
it is at the same time the most obvious one. Our 
first impression of people is gained from their gen- 
eral appearance, of which dress is one of the most 
important features. 

Consequently dress goes far to determine the es- 
timate people place upon us. Fuller acquaintance 
may compel a revision of these original impressions. 
First impressions, however, often decide our fate 



THE TEMPTATION, 21 

with people whose respect and good-will is valuable 
to us. Important positions are often won or lost 
through attention or neglect in these matters. 

THE TEMPTATION. 

Dress has its snares. — We are tempted to care, 
not for attractiveness in itself, but for the satisfac- 
tion of thinking, and having others think, how fine 
we look. Worse still, we are tempted to try to look 
not as well as we can, but better than somebody 
else; and by this combination of rivalry with van- 
ity we get the most contemptible and pitiable 
level to which perversity in dress can bring us. 
There is no end to the ridiculous and injurious 
absurdities to which this hollow vanity will lead 
those who are silly enough to yield to its de- 
mands. 

Cynicism regarding appearance.— Vanity may 
take just the opposite form. We may be just as 
proud of our bad looks, as of our good looks. 
This is the trick of the Cynic. This is the reason 
why almost every town has its old codger who seems 
to delight in wearing the shabbiest coat, and driving 
the poorest horse, and living in the most dilapidated 
shanty of anyone in town. These persons take as 
much pride in their mode of life as the devotee of 
fashion does in hers. One of these Cynics went to 
the baths with Alcibiades, the gayest of Athenian 
youths. When they came out Alcibiades put on the 
Cynics rags, leaving his own gay and costly apparel 
for the Cynic. The Cynic was in a great rage, and 



2 2 DRESS. 

protested that he would not be seen wearing such 
gaudy things as those. " Ah ! " said Alcibiades ; " so 
you care more what kind of clothes you wear than I 
do after all; for I can wear your clothes, but you 
cannot wear mine." Another of the Cynics, as he en- 
tered the elegant apartments of Plato, spat upon the 
rug, exclaiming : "Thus I pour contempt on the 
pride of Plato." "Yes," was Plato's, reply, " with a 
greater pride of your own." Since pride and vanity 
have these two forms, we need to be on our guard 
against them both. For one or the other is pretty 
sure to assail us. An eye single to the attractive- 
ness of our personal appearance is the only thing 
that will save us from one or the other of these lines 
of temptation. 

THE VICE OF DEFECT. 

Too little attention to dress and surroundings 
is slovenliness. — The sloven is known by his dirty 
hands and face, his disheveled hair, and tattered gar- 
ments. His house is in confusion ; his grounds are 
littered with rubbish ; he eats his meals at an untidy 
table ; and sleeps in an unmade bed. Slovenliness 
is a vice ; for it is an open confession that a man 
is too weak to make his surroundings the expres- 
sion of his tastes and wishes, and has allowed his 
surroundings to run over him and drag him down 
to their own level. And this subjection of man to 
the tyranny of things, when he ought to exercise a 
strong dominion over them, is the universal mark of 
vice. 



THE VICE OE EXCESS. 23 



THE VICE OF EXCESS. 



Too much attention to dress and appearance 
is fastidiousness. — These things are important ; 
but it is a very petty and empty mind that can 
find enough in them to occupy any considerable por- 
tion of its total attention and energy. The fastidi- 
ous person must have everything "just so," or the 
whole happiness of his precious self is utterly 
ruined. He spends hours upon toilet and wardrobe 
where sensible people spend minutes. Hence he be- 
comes the slave rather than the master of his dress. 

The sloven and the dude are both slaves ; 
but in different ways.— Slovenliness is slavery to 
the hideous and repulsive. Fastidiousness is slavery 
to this or that particular style or fashion. The free- 
dom and mastery of neatness consists in the ability 
to make as attractive as possible just such material 
as one's means place at his disposal with the amount 
of time and effort he can reasonably devote to 
them. 

THE PENALTY. 

Fastidiousness belittles : slovenliness de- 
grades. Both are contemptible. — The man who 
does not care enough for himself to keep the dirt off 
his hands and clothes, when not actually en- 
gaged in work that soils them, cannot complain if 
other people place no higher estimate upon him than 
he by this slovenliness puts upon himself. The 
woman whose soul rises and falls the whole distance 



24 DRESS. 

between ecstasy and despair with the fit of a glove or 
the shade of a ribbon must not wonder if people rate 
her as of about equal consequence with gloves and 
ribbons. These vices make their victims low and 
petty ; and the contempt with which they are re- 
garded is simply the recognition of the pettiness and 
degradation which the vices have begotten. 



CHAPTER III. 

lEjercise* 

WHEN the bod^ is well fed and clothed, the next 
demand is for exercise. Our powers are given us to 
be used; and unless they are used they waste away. 
Nothing destroys power so surely and completely 
as disuse. The only way to keep our powers is 
to keep them in exercise. We acquire the power 
to lift by lifting; to run, by running; to write, 
by writing; to talk, by talking { to build houses, 
by building ; to trade, by trading. In mature 
life our exercise comes to us chiefly along the 
lines of our business, domestic, and social rela- 
tions. In childhood and youth, before the pres- 
sure of earning a living comes upon us, we must 
provide for needed exercise in artificial ways. The 
play-impulse is nature's provision for this need. It 
is by hearty, vigorous play that we first gain 
command of those powers on which our future abil- 
ity to do good work depends. 

THE DUTY. 

The best exercise that of which we are least 
conscious. — It is the duty of every grown person as 
well as of every child to take time for recreation. 
Exercise taken in a systematic way for its own sake 

25 



26 EXERCISE. 

is a great deal better than nothing; and in crowded 
schools and in sedentary occupations such gymnastic 
exercises are the best thing that can be had, The best 
exercise, however, is not that which we get when we 
aim at it directly ; but that which comes incidentally 
in connection with sport and recreation. A plunge 
into the river ; a climb over the hills ; a hunt through 
the woods ; a skate on the pond ; a wade in the 
trout brook ; a ride on horseback ; a sail on the 
lake ; camping out in the forest ; — these are the best 
ways to take exercise. For in these ways we have 
such a good time that we do not think about the 
exercise at all ; and we put forth ten times the 
amount of exertion that we should if we were 
to stop and think how much exercise we proposed 
to take. 

Next in value to these natural outdoor sports 
come the artificial games ; baseball, football, hare 
and hounds, lawn tennis, croquet, and hockey. When 
neither natural nor artificial sports can be had, then 
the dumb-bells, the Indian clubs, and the foils be- 
come a necessity. 

Everyone should become proficient in as many 
of these sports as possible. These are the resources 
from which the stores of vitality and energy must 
be supplied in youth, and replenished in later life. 

THE VIRTUE. 

The value of superfluous energy. — The person 
whose own life-forces are at their best cannot help 
flowing over in exuberant gladness to gladden all he 



THE REWARD, 27 

meets. Herbert Spencer has set this forth so 
strongly in his Data of Ethics that I quote his 
words: " Bounding out of bed after an unbroken 
sleep, singing or whistling as he dresses, coming 
down with beaming face ready to laugh at the 
slightest provocation, the healthy man of high 
powers enters on the day's business not with repug- 
nance but with gladness ; and from hour to hour 
experiencing satisfaction from work effectually 
done, comes home with an abundant surplus of 
energy remaining for hours of relaxation. Full of 
vivacity, he is ever welcome. For his wife he has 
smiles and jocose speeches ; for his children stories 
of fun and play ; for his friends pleasant talk inter- 
spersed with the sallies of wit that come from buoy- 
ancy." 

THE REWARD. 

" Unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he 
shall have abundance." The reward of exertion is 
the power to make more exertion the next time. 
And the reward of habits of regular exercise and 
habitual cheerfulness is the ability to meet the 
world at every turn in the consciousness of power 
to master it, and to meet men with that good 
cheer which disarms hostility and wins friends. 

THE TEMPTATION. 

Excitement not to be made an end in itself.— 

The exhilaration of sport may be carried to the point 
of excitement ; and then this excitement maybe made 
an end in itself. This is the temptation which be- 



2% EXERCISE. 

sets all forms of recreation and amusement. It is 
the fear of this danger that has led many good 
people to distrust and disparage certain of the 
more intense forms of recreation. Their mis- 
take is in supposing that temptation is peculiar to 
these forms of amusement. As we shall see before 
we complete our study of ethics, everything brings 
temptation with it ; and the best things bring the 
severest and subtlest temptations ; and if we would 
withdraw from temptation, we should have to with- 
draw from the world. 

We must all recognize that this temptation to 
seek excitement for its own sake is a serious one. It 
is least in the natural outdoor sports like swimming 
and sailing and hunting and fishing and climbing and 
riding. Hence we should give to these forms of re- 
creation as large a place as possible in our plans for 
exercise and amusement. We should see clearly that 
the artificial indoor amusements, such as dancing, 
card-playing, theater-going, billiard-playing, are 
especially liable to give rise to that craving for 
excitement for excitement's sake which perverts 
recreation from its true function as a renewer of 
our powers into a ruinous drain upon them. The 
moment any form of recreation becomes indispensa- 
able to us, the moment we find that it diminishes 
instead of heightening our interest and delight in 
the regular duties of our daily lives, that instant we 
should check its encroachment upon our time and, 
if need be, cut it off altogether. It is impossible 
to lay down hard and fast rules, telling precisely 



THE VICE OF DEFECT. $Q 

what forms of amusement are good and what are 
bad. So much depends on the attitude of the in- 
dividual toward them, and the associations which 
they carry with them in different localities, that 
what is right and beneficial for one person in one 
set of surroundings would be wrong and disastrous 
to another person or to the same person in other 
circumstances. To enable us to see clearly the im- 
portant part recreation must play in every healthy 
life, and to see with equal clearness the danger of 
giving way to a craving for constant and unnatural 
excitement, is the most that ethics can do for us. 
The application of these principles to concrete 
cases each parent must make for his own children, 
and each individual for himself. 

THE VICE OF DEFECT. 

Neglect of exercise and recreation leads to 
moroseness. — Like milk which is allowed to stand, 
the spirit of man or woman, if left unoccupied, turns 
sour. One secret of sourness and moroseness is the 
sense that some side of our nature has been re- 
pressed ; and this inward indignation at our own 
wrongs we vent on others in bitterness and complain- 
ings. Moroseness is first a sign that we ourselves are 
miserable ; and secondly it is the occasion of mak- 
ing others miserable too. Having had Spencer's ac- 
count of the benefits of the cheerfulness that comes 
from adequate recreation, let us now see his de- 
scription of its opposite. " Far otherwise is it with 
one who is enfeebled by great neglect of self. AU 



30 EXERCISE. 

ready deficient, his energies are made more deficient 
by constant endeavors to execute tasks that prove 
beyond his strength, and by the resulting discourage- 
ment. Hours of leisure, which, rightly passed, bring 
pleasures that raise the tide of life and renew the 
powers of work, cannot be utilized : there is not 
vigor enough for enjoyments involving action, and 
lack of spirits prevents passive enjoyments from be- 
ing entered upon with zest. In brief, life becomes 
a burden. The irritability resulting now from ail- 
ments, now from failures caused from feebleness, his 
family has daily to bear. Lacking adequate energy 
for joining in them, he has at best but a tepid in- 
terest in the amusements of his children ; and he is 
called a wet blanket by his friends." 

THE VICE OF EXCESS. 

Perpetual amusement-seeking brings ennui, 
satiety, and disgust. — " All play and no work 
makes Jack a mere toy," is as true as that " Alt 
work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." The 
constant pursuit of amusement makes life empty 
and frivolous. Rightly used recreation increases 
one's powers for serious pursuits. Pursued wrongly, 
pursued as the main concern of life, amusement 
makes all serious work seem stale and dull ; and 
finally makes amusement itself dull and stale too. 
Ennui, loathing, disgust, and emptiness are the marks 
of the amusement-seeker the world over. " Vanity 
of vanities, all is vanity. All things are full of 
weariness. The eye is not satisfied with seeing nor 



THE PENALTY. 31 

the ear filled with hearing" — this is the experience 
of the man who " withheld not his heart from any 
joy/' It is the experience of everyone who exalts 
amusement from the position of an occasional 
servant to that of abiding master of his life. 

THE PENALTY. 

The penalty of neglected exercise is con- 
firmed debility. — " Whosoever'hath not, from him 
shall be taken away even that which he hath." 
Enfeebled from lack of exercise a man finds himself 
unequal to the demands of his work ; and soured by 
his consequent dissatisfaction with himself, he be- 
comes alienated from his fellows. The tide of life 
becomes low and feeble ; and he can neither over- 
come obstacles in his own strength nor attract to 
himself the help of others. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Worft, 

FOOD, clothes, shelter, and all the necessities of 
life are the products of labor. Even the simplest 
food, such as fruit and berries, must be picked be- 
fore it can be eaten : the coarsest garment of skins 
must be stripped from the animal before it can be 
worn : the rudest shelter of rock or cave must be 
seized and defended against intruders before it can 
become one's own. And as civilization advances, the 
element of labor involved in the production of 
goods steadily increases. The universal necessity 
of human labor to convert the raw materials given 
us by nature into articles serviceable to life and 
enjoyment renders work a fundamental branch of 
human conduct. Regular meals, comfortable 
homes, knowledge, civilization, all are the fruits of 
work. And unless we contribute our part to the 
production of these goods, we have no moral right 
to be partakers of the fruits. " If any will not 
work, neither let him eat." " All work," says 
Thomas Carlyle, " is noble: work alone is noble. 
Blessed is he that has found his work ; let him ask 
no other blessedness. Two men I honor, and no 
third. First, the toilworn craftsman who with 

3 2 



THE DUTY. 

earth-made implement laboriously conquers the 
Earth, and makes her man's. A second man I 
honor, and still more highly: him who is seen toil- 
ing for the spiritually indispensable ; not daily bread, 
but the bread of life. These two in all their de- 
grees I honor; all else is chaff and dust, which let 
the wind blow whither it listeth. We must all toil, 
or steal (howsoever we name our stealing), which is 
worse." 

THE DUTY. 

Every man lives either upon the fruit of his 
own work, or upon the fruit of the work of 
Others. — In childhood it is right for us to live upon 
the fruits of the toil of our parents and friends. 
But to continue this life of dependence on the work 
of others after one has become an able-bodied man 
or woman is to live the life of a perpetual baby. 
No life so little justifies itself as that of the idle rich. 
The idle poor man suffers the penalty of idleness 
in his own person. He gives little to the world ; 
and he gets little in return. The idle rich man 
gives nothing, and gets much in return. And while 
he lives, someone has to work the harder for his 
being in the world ; and when he dies the world is 
left poorer than it would have been had he never 
been born. He has simply consumed a portion of 
the savings of his ancestors, and balanced the 
energy and honor of their lives by his own life of 
worthlessness and shame. Inherited wealth should 
bring with it a life of greater responsibility and harder 



34 WORK. 

toil ; for the rich man is morally bound to use his 
wealth for the common good. And that is a much 
harder task than merely to earn one's own living. 
An able-bodied man who does not contribute to the 
world at least as much as he takes out of it is a 
beggar and a thief ; whether he shirks the duty of 
work under the pretext of poverty or riches. 

Every boy and girl should be taught some 
trade, business, art, or profession. — To neglect 
this duty is to run the risk of enforced dependence 
upon others, than which nothing can be more de- 
structive of integrity and self-respect. The in- 
creasing avenues open to women, and the fact 
that a woman is liable at any time to have herself 
and her children to support, make it as important 
for women as for men to have the ability to earn an 
honest living. 

Woman's sphere is chiefly in the home and 
the social circle. — Provided she is able to earn her 
living whenever it becomes necessary, and in case her 
parents are able and willing to support her, a young 
woman is justified in remaining in the home until her 
marriage. Her assistance to her mother in the domes- 
tic and social duties of the home, and her prepara- 
tion for similar duties in her own future home, is often 
the most valuable service she can render during the 
years between school and marriage. In order, how- 
ever, forsuch a life to be morally justified she must 
realize that it is her duty to do all in her power to 
help her mother; to make home more pleasant ; and 
to take part in those forms of social and philan- 



THE VIRTUE. 35 

thropic work which only those who have leisure can 
undertake. 

The son or daughter who is to inherit wealth, 
should be trained in some line of political, scientific, 
artistic, charitable, or philanthropic work, whereby 
he may use his wealth and leisure in the service of 
the public, and justify his existence by rendering to 
society some equivalent for that security and enjoy- 
ment of wealth which society permits him to pos- 
sess without the trouble of earning it. 

All honest work, manual, mental, social, domestic, 
political and philanthropic, scientific and literary, is 
honorable. Any form of life without hard work of 
either hand or brain is shameful and disgraceful. The 
idler is of necessity a debtor to society ; though 
there are forms of idleness to which, for reasons of 
its own, society never presents its bill. 

THE VIRTUE. 

Industry conquers the world. — Industry is a 
virtue, because it asserts this fundamental interest of 
self-support in opposition to the solicitations of idle- 
ness and ease. Industry masters the world, and 
makes it man's servant and slave. The industrious 
man too is master of his own feelings ; and compels 
the weaker and baser impulses of his nature to stand 
back and give the higher interests room. The in- 
dustrious man will do thorough work, and produce a 
good article, cost what it may. He will not suffer 
his arm to rest until it has done his bidding ; nor 
will he let nature go until her resources and forces 



3 6 WORK. 

have been made to serve his purpose. This mastery 
over ourselves and over nature is the mark of virtue 
and manliness always and everywhere. 

THE REWARD. 

Industry works; and the fruit of work is 
wealth, — The industrious man mayor may not have 
great riches. That depends on his talents, oppor- 
tunities, and character. Great riches are neither to 
be sought nor shunned. With them or without them 
the highest life is possible ; and on the whole it is 
easier without than with great riches. A moderate 
amount of wealth, however, is essential to the fullest 
development of one's powers and the freest enjoy- 
ment of life. Of such a moderate competence the 
industrious man is assured. 

THE TEMPTATION. 

Soft places and easy kinds of work to be 
avoided. — Work costs pain and effort. Men natu- 
rally love ease. Hence arises the temptation to put 
ease above self-support. This temptation in its 
extreme form, if yielded to, makes a man a beggar 
and a tramp. More frequently the temptation is to 
take an easy kind of work, rather than harder work ; 
or to do our work shiftlessly rather than thoroughly. 

Young men are tempted to take clerkships where 
they can dress well and do light work, instead of 
learning a trade which requires a long apprenticeship, 
and calls for rough, hard work. The result is that 
the clerk remains a clerk all his life on low wages, 



THE VICE OF DEFECT. 37 

and open to the competition of everybody who can 
read and write and cipher. While the man who has 
taken time to learn a trade, and has taken off his 
coat and accustomed himself to good hard work, 
has an assured livelihood ; and only the few who 
have taken the same time to learn the trade, and are 
as little afraid of hard work as himself, can compete 
with him. This temptation to seek a " soft berth, " 
where the only work required is sitting in an office, 
or talking, or writing, or riding around, is the form 
of sloth which is taking the strength and independ- 
ence and manliness out of young men to-day faster 
than anything else. It is only one degree above the 
loafer and the tramp. The young man who starts in 
life by seeking an easy place will never be a success 
either hi business or in character. 

THE VICE OF DEFECT. 

The slavery of laziness. — Laziness is a vice be- 
cause it sacrifices the permanent interest of self- 
support to the temporary inclination to indo- 
lence and ease. The lazy man is the slave of his own 
feelings. His body is his master ; not his servant. 
He is the slave of circumstances. What he does de- 
pends not on what he knows it is best to do, but on how 
he happens to feel. If the work is hard ; if it is cold 
or rainy ; if something breaks ; or things do not go 
to suit him, he gives up and leaves the work undone. 
He is always waiting for something to turn up ; and 
since nothing turns up for our benefit except what 
we turn up ourselves, he never finds the opportunity 



3 8 WORK. 

that suits him ; he fails in whatever he undertakes; 
and accomplishes nothing. Laziness is weakness, 
submission, defeat, slavery to feeling and circum- 
stance ; and these are the universal characteristics 
of vice. 

THE VICE OF EXCESS. 

The folly of overwork. — Work has for its end 

self-support. Work wisely directed makes leisure 
possible. Overwork is work for its own sake ; work 
for false and unreal ends ; work that exhausts the 
physical powers. Overwork makes a man a slave 
to his work, as laziness makes him a slave to his 
ease. The man who makes haste to be rich ; 
who works from morning until night "on the 
clean jump"; who drives his business with the 
fierce determination to get ahead of his competi- 
tors at all hazards, misses the quiet joys of life 
to which the wealth he pursues in such hot haste is 
merely the means, breaks down in early or middle 
life, and destroys the physical basis on which both 
work and enjoyment depend. To undertake more 
than we can do without excessive wear and tear 
and without permanent injury to health and 
strength is wrong. Laziness is the more ig- 
noble vice ; but the folly of overwork is equally 
apparent, and its results are equally disastrous. 
Laziness is a rot that consumes the base ele- 
ments of society. Overwork is a tempest that 
strikes down the bravest and best. That work alone 
is wrought in virtue which keeps the powers up 



THE PENALTY. 39 

to their normal and healthful activity, and is subordi- 
nated to the end of self-support and harmonious 
self-development. The ideal attitude toward work 
is beautifully presented in Matthew Arnold's sonnet 
on " Quiet Work " : 

One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee, 
One lesson which in every wind is blown ; 
One lesson of two duties kept at one 
Though the loud world proclaim their enmity — 

Of toil unsevered from tranquillity ; 
Of labor, that in lasting fruit outgrows 
Far noisier schemes, accomplished in repose, 
Too great for haste, too high for rivalry. 

THE PENALTY. 

Laziness leads to poverty. — The lazy man does 
nothing to produce wealth. The only way in which 
he can get it is by inheritance, or by gift, or by theft. 
Money received by inheritance does not last long. 
The man who is too lazy to earn money, is gen- 
erally too weak to use it wisely ; and it soon slips 
through his fingers. When a man's laziness is once 
found out people refuse to give to him. And the 
thief cannot steal many times without being caught. 
Industry is the only sure and permanent title to 
wealth ; and where industry is wanting, there, soon 
or late, poverty must come. 



CHAPTER V. 

property 

The products of labor, saved up and appro- 
priated to our use, constitute property. Without 
property life cannot rise above the hand-to-mouth 
existence of the savage. It is as important to save 
and care for property after we have earned it, as it is 
to earn it in the first place. Property does not stay 
with us unless we watch it sharply. Left to itself 
it takes wings and flies away. Unused land is over- 
grown by weeds ; unoccupied houses crumble and 
decay; food left exposed sours and molds; un- 
used tools rust ; and machinery left to stand 
idle gets out of order. Everything goes to rack 
and ruin, unless we take constant care. Hence the 
preservation of property is one of the fundamental 
concerns of life and conduct. 

THE DUTY. 

Provision for family and for old age. — Childhood 
and old age ought to be free from the necessity of 
earning a living. Childhood should be devoted to 
growth and education ; old age to enjoyment and 
repose. In order to secure this provision for old age, 
for the proper training of children and against sick- 
ness and accident, it is a duty to save a portion 

40 



THE VI Ri 

of one's earnings during the early years of art 
life. The man who at this period doing m 

than to support himself and family, is not providing 
for their permanent support at all. They are f e 
ing to-day with the risk of starvation to-r 

In primitive conditions of society this provision 
for the future consisted in the common ownership 
by family or clan of flocks and h r lands, 

whereby thenecess ties of life were insur each 

member of the cla: mily from, b ath. 





THE 






The 


importance of s 


ystematic saving. 




more 


complex civi'iz; 


ition of to-dav. 




assume 


s ten the 


different forms ; 


* is 1 


mostly 


by individ 


a n u n a s 


univ 


symbol 


. money. H 


; the u r ; . z 1 '. '. 


r is to lay 


aside a 


certain sum of 


money out of oui 


■ regular 


earning 


y each month r 






per-:: 


of our working 1: 




- - ~ - -'^ -,■ ■ 


Person 


s who acquire a ! 


liberal education. " 




difficul 


t trade or orofe 


ssion, will not be 





begin to save until they are twenty or twenty-five. 

Whenever earning begins, saving wv 

If earnings are small, savings must be small I 

ntil earnings are large 

and saving is easy, will post 

.er. The h : v. 

formed early and by us a. 1 pan :'h -.-::' rr. 

or it will not be fcrmeu at all. u :. :1. a 

dutv a- earning : and the two should begin t : aether. 



42 PROPERTY. 

Earning provides for the wants of the individual 
and the hour. It requires both earning and saving 
to provide for the needs of a life-time and the wel- 
fare of a family. Savings-banks and building and 
loan associations afford the best opportunities for 
small savings at regular intervals ; and no man has 
any right to marry until he has a savings-bank 
account, or shares in a building and loan associ- 
ation, or an equally regular and secure method of 
systematic saving. In early life, before savings 
have become sufficient to provide for his family in 
case of death, it is also a duty to combine saving 
with life-insurance. Both in investment of savings 
and in life-insurance, one should make sure that the 
institution or organization to which he intrusts his 
money is on a sound business basis. All specula- 
tive schemes should be strictly avoided. Any 
company or form of investment that offers to give 
back more than you put into it, plus a fair rate of 
interest on the money, is not a fit place for a man 
to trust the savings on which the future of himself 
and his family depends. Security, absolute security, 
not profits and dividends, is what one should 
demand of the institution to which he trusts his 
savings. 

Economy eats the apple to the core ; wears 
clothes until they are threadbare ; makes things 
over ; gets the entire utility out of a thing ; throws 
nothing away that can be used again ; gets its 
money's worth for every cent expended ; buys 
nothing for which it cannot pay cash down and 



THE REWARD. 43 

leave something besides for saving. It is a manly 
quality, or virtue, because it masters things, keeps 
them under our control, compels them to render all 
the service there is in them, and insures our last- 
ing independence. 

THE REWARD. 

The savings of early and middle life support 
old age in honorable rest, and give to children 
a fair start in life. — All men are liable to misfor- 
tune and accident. The improvident man is 
crushed by them ; for they find him without re- 
served force to meet them. 

The economical man has in his savings a balance 
wheel whose momentum carries him by hard places. 
His position is independent and his prosperity is 
permanent. For it depends not on the fortunes of 
the day, which are uncertain and variable ; but on 
the fixed habits and principles of a life-time, which 
are changeless and reliable. 

THE TEMPTATION. 

Living beyond one's income : running in 
debt. — Income is limited; while the things we 
would like to have are infinite. We must draw the 
line somewhere. Duty says, draw it well inside of 
income. Temptation says, draw it at income, or a 
trifle outside of income. Yield to this temptation, 
and our earnings are gone before we know it, and 
debt stares us in the face. Debts are easy to con- 
tract, but hard to pay. The debt must be paid 



44 PROPERTY. 

sometime with accumulated interest. And when 
the day of reckoning comes it invariably costs more 
inconvenience and trouble to pay it than it would 
have cost to have gone without the thing for the 
sake of which we ran in debt. 

Never, on any account, get in debt. Never spend 
your whole income. These are rules we are con- 
stantly tempted to break. But the man who yields 
to this temptation is on the high road to financial 
ruin. 

THE VICE OF DEFECT. 

Wastefulness. — The wasteful man buys things 
he does not need ; spends his money as fast as he 
can get it ; lives beyond his means ; throws things 
away which are capable of further service ; runs in 
debt ; and is forever behindhand. He lives from 
hand to mouth ; is dependent upon his neighbors 
for things which with a little economy he might 
own himself; makes no provision for the future, 
and when sickness or old age comes upon him, he is 
without resources. 

THE VICE OF EXCESS. 

Miserliness. — Economy saves for the sake of fu- 
ture expenditure. Miserliness saves for the sake of 
saving. The spendthrift sacrifices the future to 
present enjoyment. The miser sacrifices present 
enjoyment to an imaginary future which never 
comes ; and so misses enjoyment altogether. The 
prudent man harmonizes present with future enjoy- 
ment, and so lives a life of constant enjoyment. 



THE PENALTY. 45 

The spendthrift spends recklessly, regardless of con- 
sequences. The miser hoards anxiously, despising 
the present. The man of prudence and economy 
spends liberally for present needs, and saves only 
as a means to more judicious and lasting expendi- 
ture. The miser is as much the slave of his money 
as is the spendthrift the slave of his indulgences. 
Economy escapes both forms of slavery and main- 
tains its freedom by making both spending and 
saving tributary to the true interests of the self. 

THE PENALTY. 

The thing we waste to-day, we want to-mor- 
row. — The money we spend foolishly to-day we have 
to borrow to-morrow, and pay with interest the day 
after. Wastefulness destroys the seeds of which 
prosperity is the fruit. Wastefulness throws away 
the pennies, and so must go without the dollars 
which the pennies make. Years of health and 
strength spent in hand-to-mouth indulgence inevi- 
tably bear fruit in a comfortless old age. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE jack-of-all-trades is a bungler in every one 
of them. The man who will do anything well must 
confine himself to doing a very few things. Yet 
while the things a man can produce to advantage 
are few, the things he wants to consume are many. 
Exchange makes possible at the same time concen- 
tration in production and diversity of enjoyment. 
Exchange enables the shoemaker to produce shoes, 
the tailor to make coats, the carpenter to build houses, 
the farmer to raise grain, the weaver to make cloth, 
the doctor to heal disease ; and at the same time 
brings to each one of them a pair of shoes, a coat, 
a house, a barrel of flour, a cut of cloth, and such 
medical attendance as he needs. Civilization rests 
on exchange. 

THE DUTY. - 

It is the duty of each party in a trade to give 
a fair and genuine equivalent for what he ex- 
pects to receive. — Articles exchanged always rep- 
resent work. And it is our duty to make sure that 
the article we offer represents thorough work. 
Good honest work is the foundation of all righteous- 
ness. Whatever we offer for sale, whether it be our 

4 6 



THE VIRTUE. 47 

labor for wages, or goods for a price, ought to be 
as good and thorough as we can make it. To sell a 
day's work for wages, and then to loaf apart of that 
day, is giving a man idleness when he pays for work. 
To sell a man a shoddy coat when he thinks he is 
buying good wool, is giving him cold when he pays 
for warmth. To give a man defective plumbing in 
his house when he hires you for a good workman, 
is to sell him disease and death, and take pay for it. 
Selling adulterated drugs and groceries is giving a 
man a stone when he asks for and pays for bread. 
If, after we have done our best to make or secure 
good articles, we are unable to avoid defects and 
imperfections, then it is our duty to tell squarely 
just what the imperfection is, and sell it for a re- 
duced price. On no other basis than this of mak- 
ing genuine goods, and representing them just as 
they are, can exchange fulfill its function of mutual 
advantage to all concerned. 

THE VIRTUE. 

(Honesty looks people straight in the eye, 
tells the plain truth about its goods, stands on 
its merits, asks no favors, v has nothing to con- 
ceal, fears no investigation.VThis bold, open, self- 
reliant quality of honesty is what makes it a manly 
thing, or a virtue. To do thorough work ; to speak 
the plain truth ; to do exactly as you would be done 
by; to put another man's interest on a level with 
your own ; to take under no pretext or excuse a 
cent's worth more than you give in any trade you 



48 EXCHANGE. 

make, calls out all the strength and forbearance and 
self-control T there is in a man, and that is why it 
ranks so high among the virtues. 



T. 



THE REWARD. 



'he honest man is the only man who can re- 
spect himself. — He carries his head erect, and no 
man can put him down. Everything about him is 
sound and every act will bear examination. This 
sense of one's own genuineness and worth is 
honesty's chief reward. 

THE TEMPTATION. 

Every one-sided transaction dishonest. — In 

fair exchange both parties are benefited. In unfair 
exchange one party profits by the other's loss. Any 
transaction in which either party fails to receive an 
equivalent for what he gives is a fraud ; and the man 
who knowingly and willfully makes such a trade is a 
thief in disguise. For taking something which be- 
longs to another, without giving him a return, and 
without his full, free, and intelligent consent, is 
stealing. 

The temptation to take advantage of another's 
ignorance ; to palm off a poor article for a good one ; 
to get more than we give, is very great in all forms 
of business. Cheating is very common, and one is 
tempted to do a little cheating himself in order to 
keep even with the rest. The only way to resist it 
is to see clearly that cheating is lying and stealing 
put together ; that it is an injury to our fellow-men 



THE VICE OE DEFECT. 49 

and to society ; that it is playing the part of a knave 
and a rascal instead of an honest and honorable 
man. 

THE VICE OF DEFECT. 

The meanest and most contemptible kind of 
cheating is quackery. — The quack is liar, thief, and 
murderer all in one. For in undertaking to do 
things for which he has no adequate training and 
skill, he pretends to be what he is not. He takes 
money for which he is unable to render a genuine 
equivalent. And by inducing people to trust their 
lives in his incompetent and unskilled hands he 
turns them aside from securing competent treat- 
ment, and so confirms disease and hastens death. 

The dishonest man a public nuisance and a 
common enemy. — He gets his living out of other 
people. Whatever wealth he gets, some honest 
man who has earned it is compelled to go without. 
Dishonesty is the perversion of exchange from its 
noble function as a civilizing agent and a public 
benefit, into the ignoble service of making one man 
rich at the expense of the many. It is because the 
dishonest man is living at other people's expense, 
profiting by their losses, and fattening himself on 
the earnings of those whom he has wronged, that 
dishonesty is deservedly ranked as one of the most 
despicable and abominable of vices. 

THE VICE OF EXCESS. 

It is as important to protect our own interest, 
as to regard the interests of others.— Xo man 



5° EXCHANGE. 

has any more right to cheat me than I have to cheat 
him ; and if he tries to take advantage of me it is 
my duty to resist him, and to say a decided " no " to 
his schemes for enriching himself at my expense. 

One rule in particular is very important. Never 
sign a note for another in order to give him a credit 
which he could not command without your name. 
That is a favor which no man has a right to ask, and 
which no man who regards his duty to himself and to 
his family will grant. If a man is in a tight place and 
asks you to lend him money, or to give him money, 
that is a proposition to be considered on its merits. 
But to assume an indefinite responsibility by sign- 
ing another man's note, is accepting the risk of ruin- 
ing ourselves for his accommodation. We owe it 
to ourselves and our families to keep our finances ab- 
solutely under our own control, free from all com- 
plication with the risks and uncertainties of another's 
enterprises and fortunes. 

Our own rights are as sacred as those of another. 
There are two sides to every bargain ; and one side 
is as important as the other. The sacrifice of a 
right may be as great an evil as the perpetration of 
a wrong. 

THE PENALTY. 

Dishonesty eats the heart out of a man. — The 

habit of looking solely to one's own interest deadens 
the social sympathies, dwarfs the generous affec- 
tions, weakens self-respect, until at length the dishon- 
est men can rob the widow of her livelihood ; take 
an exorbitant commission on the labor of the 



THE PENALTY. 51 

orphan ; charge an extortionate rent to a family of 
helpless invalids ; sell worthless stocks to an aged 
couple in exchange for the hard earnings of a life- 
time, and still endure to live. Dishonesty makes 
men inhuman. The love of gain is a species of 
moral and spiritual decay. When it attacks the 
heart the finer and better feelings wither and die ; 
and on this decay of sympathy and kindness and 
generosity and justice there thrive and flourish 
meanness and heartlessness and cruelty and inhu- 
manity. 

Hereditary effects of dishonesty. — So deeply 
does the vice of dishonesty eat into the moral nature 
that mental and moral deterioration is handed down 
to offspring. The scientific study of heredity 
shows that the deterioration resulting from this 
cause is more sure and fatal than that following 
many forms of insanity. The son or daughter of a 
mean, dishonest man is handicapped with tenden- 
cies toward moral turpitude and anti-social conduct 
for which no amount of his ill-gotten gains, received 
by inheritance, can be an adequate compensation. 
Says Maudsley, " I cannot but think that the ex- 
treme passion for getting rich, absorbing the whole 
energies of a life, predisposes to mental de- 
generacy in the offspring, either to moral defect, or 
to intellectual deficiency, or to outbursts of positive 
insanity." And the same author says elsewhere: 
u The anti-social, egoistic development of the indi- 
vidual predisposes to, if it does not predetermine, 
the mental degeneracy of his progeny ; he, alien 



5 2 EXCHANGE. 

from his kind by excessive egoisms, determines 
an alienation of mind in them. If I may trust in 
that matter my observations, I know no one who is 
more likely to breed insanity in his offspring than 
the intensely narrow, self-sensitive, suspicious, dis- 
trustful, deceitful, and self-deceiving individual, who 
never comes into sincere and sound relations with 
men and things, who is incapable by nature and 
habit of genuinely healthy communion with himself 
or with his kind. A moral development of that 
sort, I believe, is more likely to predetermine in- 
sanity in the next generation than are many forms 
of actual derangement in parents : for the whole 
moral nature is essentially infected, and that goes 
deeper down, and is more dangerous, qua heredity, 
than a particular derangement. A mental alienation 
is a natural pathological evolution of it." 



CHAPTER VII. 

IKnowle&ge* 

WHAT food is to the body, that knowledge is to 
the mind. It is the bread of intellectual life. With- 
out knowledge of agriculture and the mechanic arts 
we should be unable to provide ourselves with food 
and clothing and houses and ships and roads and 
bridges. Without knowledge of natural science we 
should be strangers in the world in which we live, 
the victims of the grossest superstitions. Without 
knowledge of history and political science we could 
have no permanent tranquility and peace, but should 
pass a precarious existence, exposed to war and 
violence, rapine and revolution. Knowledge un- 
locks for us the mysteries of nature ; unfolds for us 
the treasured wisdom of the world's great men ; in- 
terprets to us the longings and aspirations of our 

hearts. 

Books, we know, 
Are a substantial world, both pure and good : 
Round these with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, 
Our pastime and our happiness will grow. 

THE DUTY. 

The severity of truth. — Things exist in precise 
and definite relations. Events take place according 

53 



54 KNOWLEDGE. 

to fixed and immutable laws. Truth is the percep- 
tion of things just as they are. Between truth and 
falsehood there is no middle ground. Either a fact 
is so, or it is not. " Truth," says Ruskin, " is the one 
virtue of which there are no degrees. There are some 
faults slight in the sight of love, some errors slight 
in the estimation of wisdom ; but truth forgives no 
insult, and endures no stain/' Truth does not al- 
ways lie upon the surface of things. It requires 
hard, patient toil to dig down beneath the super- 
ficial crust of appearance to the solid rock of fact 
on which truth rests. To discover and declare truth 
as it is, and facts as they are, is the vocation of the 
scholar. Not what he likes to think, not what 
other people will be pleased to hear, not what will 
be popular or profitable ; but what as the result of 
careful investigation, painstaking inquiry, prolonged 
reflection he has learned to be the fact ; — this, 
nothing less and nothing more, the scholar must 
proclaim. Truth is fidelity to fact ; it plants itself 
upon reality ; and hence it speaks with authority. 
The truthful mairis one whom we can depend upon. 
His word is as good as his bond. " He sweareth to 
his own hurt, and changeth not/' The truthful 
man brings truth and man together. 

THE VIRTUE. 

Veracity has two foundations : one reverence 
for truth ; the other regard for one's fellow-men. 

— Ordinarily these two motives coincide and re-en- 
force each other. The right of truth to be spoken, and 



THE VIRTUE. 55 

the benefit to men from hearing it, are two sides of 
the same obligation. Only in the most rare and ex- 
ceptional cases can these two motives conflict. To 
a healthy, right-minded man the knowledge of the 
truth is always a good. 

Apparent exceptions to the duty of truthful- 
ness. — We owe truth to all normal people, and 
under all normal circumstances. We do not neces- 
sarily owe it to the abnormal. In sickness, when 
the patient cannot bear the shock of distressing 
news ; in insanity, when the maniac cannot give to 
facts their right interpretation ; in criminal perver- 
sity, when knowledge would be used in furtherance 
of crime, the abnormal condition of the person 
with whom we have to deal may justify us in with- 
holding from him facts which he would use to the 
injury of himself or others. These are very rare and 
extreme cases, and are apparent rather than real 
exceptions to the universal rule of absolute truth- 
fulness in human speech. For in these cases it is 
not from a desire to deceive or mislead the person, 
that we withold the truth. We feel sure that the 
sick person, when he recovers ; the insane person 
when he is restored to reason ; the criminal, if he is 
ever converted to uprightness, will appreciate the 
kindness of our motive, and thank us for our deed. 
To the person of sound body, sound mind, and 
sound moral intent, no conceivable combination of 
circumstances can ever excuse us from the strict 
requirement of absolute veracity, or make a lie 
anything but base, cowardly, and contemptible. 



56 KNOWLEDGE. 

THE REWARD. 

Society is founded on trust. — Without confidence 
in one another, we could not live in social relations 
a single day. We should relapse into barbarism, 
strife, and mutual destruction. Since society rests 
on confidence, and confidence rests on tried veracity, 
the rewards of veracity are all those mutual advan- 
tages which a civilized society confers upon its 
members. 

THE TEMPTATION. 

The costliness of strict truthfulness. — Truth 
is not only hard to discover, but frequently it is costly 
to speak. Truth is often opposed to sacred tradi- 
tions, inherited prejudices, popular beliefs, and 
vested interests. To proclaim truth in the face of 
these opponents in early times has cost many a man 
his life ; and to-day it often exposes one to calumny 
and abuse. Hence comes the temptation to conceai 
our real opinions ; to cover up what we know to be 
true under some phrase which we believe will be 
popular ; to sacrifice our convictions to what we 
suppose to be our interests. 

Especially when we have done wrong the temp- 
tation to cover it up with a lie is very great. 
Deception seems so easy; it promises to smooth 
over our difficulties so neatly; that it is one of the 
hardest temptations to resist. Little do we dream, 

What a tangled web we weave 
When first we practice to deceive. 



THE VICE OF DEFECT. 57 

THE VICE OF DEFECT. 

The forms of falsehood are numberless.— 

We may lie by our faces ; by our general bearing; 
by our silence, as well as by our lips. There is " the 
glistening and softly spoken lie; the amiable fallacy; 
the patriotic lie of the historian ; the provident lie 
of the politician ; the zealous lie of the partisan ; 
the merciful lie of the friend ; the careless lie of each 
man to himself." The mind of man was made for 
truth: truth is the only atmosphere in which the 
mind of man can breathe without contamination. 
No passing benefit which I can secure for myself or 
others can compensate for the injury which a false- 
hood inflicts on the mind of him who tells it and on 
the mind of him to whom it is told. For benefits and 
advantages, however great and important, are what 
we have, and they perish with the using. The mind 
is what we are ; and an insult to our intelligence, a 
scar upon ourselves, a blow at that human confidence 
which binds us all together, is irremediable. 

THE VICE OF EXCESS. 

The mischievousness of gossip and scandal.— 

We are not called upon to know everything that is 
going on ; nor to tell everything that we cannot help 
knowing. Idle curiosity and mischievous gossip re- 
sult from the direction of our thirst for knowledge 
toward trifling and unworthy objects. There is 
great virtue in minding one's own business. The 
tell-tale is abhorrent even to the least developed 



S8 KNOWLEDGE. 

moral sensibility. The gossip, the busybody, the 
scandalmonger is the worst pest that invests the 
average town and village. These mischief-makers 
take a grain of circumstantial evidence, mix with it a 
bushelof fancies, suspicions, surmises, and inuendoes, 
and then go from house to house peddling the pro- 
duct for undoubted fact. The scandalmonger is the 
murderer of reputations, the destroyer of domestic 
peace, the insuperable obstacle to the mutual friend- 
liness of neighborhoods. This " rejoicing in in- 
iquity " is the besetting sin of idle people. The 
man or woman who delights in this gratuitous and 
uncalled-for criticism of neighbors thereby puts him- 
self below the moral level of the ones whose faults 
he criticises. Martineau, in his scale of the springs of 
action, rightly ranks censoriousness, with vindictive- 
ness and suspiciousness, at the very bottom of the 
list. Unless there is some positive good to be gained 
by bringing wrong to light and offenders to justice 
we should know as little as possible of the failings 
of our fellow-men, and keep that little strictly to 
ourselves. 

THE PENALTY. 

Falsehood undermines the foundations of so- 
cial order. — Universal falsehood would bring social 
chaos. The liar takes advantage of the opportunity 
which his position as a member of society gives him 
to strike a deadly blow at the heart of the social order 
on which he depends for his existence, and without 
whose aid his arm would be powerless to strike. 



THE PENALTY. 59 

The liar likewise loses confidence in himself. — 

He cannot distinguish truth from falsehood, he has 
so frequently confounded them. He is caught in his 
own meshes. A good liar must have a long memory. 
Having no recognized standard to go by, he cannot 
remember whether he said one thing or another about 
a given fact ; and so he hangs himself by the rope of 
his own contradictions. Worse than these outward 
consequences is the loss of confidence in his own 
integrity and manhood. In Kant's words, " A lie is 
the abandonment, or, as it. were, the annihilation of 
the dignity of man." 



CHAPTER VIII. 

TTime* 

EVERY act we do, every thought we think, every 
feeling we cherish exists in time. Our life is a suc- 
cession of flying moments. Once gone, they can 
never be recalled. As they are employed, so our 
character becomes. To use time wisely is a good 
part of the art of living well, for " time is the stuff 
life is made of." 

THE DUTY. 

The duty of making life a consistent whole. — 

Life is not merely a succession of separate mo- 
ments. It is an organic whole. The way in which 
we spend one moment affects the next, and all that 
follow; just as the condition of one part of the 
body affects the well-being of all the rest. As we 
have seen, dissipation to-day means disease to-mor- 
row. Work to-day means property to-morrow. 
Wastefulness to-day means want to-morrow. Hence 
it should be our aim so to co-ordinate one period of 
time with another that our action will promote not 
merely the immediate ^interests of the passing mo- 
ment, but the interests of the permanent self through- 
out the whole of life. What we pursue on one day 
must not clash with what we pursue the next ; each 

60 



THE VIRTUE, 6t 

must contribute its part to our comprehensive and 
permanent well-being. 

THE VIRTUE 

Prudence is the habit of looking ahead, and 
seeing present conduct in its relation to future 

welfare,— Prudence is manly and virtuous because it 
controls present inclination, instead of being con- 
trolled by it. A burning appetite or passion springs 
up within us, and demands instant obedience to its 
demands. The weak man yields at once and lets 
the appetite or passion or inclination lead him 
whithersoever it listeth. Not so the strong, the 
prudent man. He says to the hot, impetuous pas- 
sion: " Sit down, and be quiet. I will consider 
your request. If it seems best I will do as you 
wish. If it turns out that what you ask is not for 
my interest I shall not do it. You need not think 
that I am going to do everything you ask me to, 
whether it is for my interest to do it or not. You 
have fooled me a good many times, and hereafter I 
propose to look into the merits of your requests 
before I grant them." It takes strength and cour- 
age and determination to treat the impulses of our 
nature in this haughty and imperious manner. But 
the strength and resolution which it takes to do an 
act is the very essence of its manliness and virtue. 

THE REWARD. 

The life of the prudent man holds together, 
part plays into part, and the whole runs 
smoothly. — One period of life, one fraction of time, 



62 TIME. 

does not conflict with another. He looks on the 
past with satisfaction because he is enjoying the 
fruit of that past in present well-being. He looks 
to the future with confidence because the present 
contains the seeds of future well-being. Each step 
in life is adjusted to every other, and the result is a 
happy and harmonious whole. 

THE TEMPTATION. 

Time tempts us to break up our lives into 
separate parts. — " Let us eat and drink, for to- 
morrow we die," " After us the deluge. " These are 
the maxims of fools. The reckless seizure of the 
pleasures of the present hour, regardless of the days 
and years to come, is the characteristic mark of 
folly. 

THE VICE OF DEFECT. 

" Procrastination is the thief of time." — The 

particular impulse which most frequently leads us to 
put off the duty of the hour is indolence. But any 
appetite or passion which induces us to postpone a 
recognized duty for the sake of a present delight is 
an invitation to procrastination. 

The fallacy of procrastination, the trick by which 
it deceives, is in making one believe that at a differ- 
ent time he will be a different person. The pro- 
crastinator admits, for instance, that a piece of work 
must be done. But he argues, " Just now I would 
rather play or loaf than do the work. By and by 
there will come a time when I shall rather do the 
work than play or loaf. Let's wait till that time 



THE VICE OF EXCESS. 6$ 

comes. " That time never comes. Our likes and 
dislikes do not change from one day to another. 
To-morrow finds us as lazy as to-day, and with the 
habit of procrastination strengthened by the indul- 
gence of yesterday. Putting a duty off once does 
not make it easier: it makes it harder to do the 
next time. 

Play or rest when we ought to be at work is 
weakening and demoralizing. Rest and play after 
work is bracing and invigorating. The sooner we 
face and conquer a difficulty, the less of a difficulty 
it is. The longer we put it off the greater it seems, 
and the less becomes our strength with which to 
overcome it. 

THE VICE OF EXCESS. 

Anxiety defeats itself. — Anxiety sacrifices the 
present to the future. When this becomes a habit 
it defeats its own end. For the future is nothing 
but a succession of moments, which, when they are 
realized, are present moments. And the man who 
sacrifices all the present moments to his conception 
of a future, sacrifices the very substance out of 
which the real future is composed. For when he 
reaches the time to which he has been looking for- 
ward, and for the sake of which he has sacrificed all 
his early days, the habit of anxiety stays by him 
and compels him to sacrifice that future, now be- 
come present, to another future, still farther ahead ; 
and so on forever. Thus life becomes an endless 
round of fret and worry, full of imaginary ills, des- 



64 TIME. 

titute of all real and present satisfaction. It is a 
good rule never to cross a bridge until we come to 
it. Prudence demands that we make reasonable 
preparation for crossing it in advance. But w r hen 
these preparations are made prudence has done its 
work, and waits calmly until the time comes to put 
its plans into operation. Anxiety fills all the inter- 
vening time with forebodings of all the possible 
obstacles that may arise when the time for action 
comes. 

Procrastination, anxiety, and prudence. — Pro- 
crastination sacrifices the future to the present. 
Anxiety sacrifices the present to the future. 
Prudence co-ordinates present and future in a con- 
sistent whole, in which both present and future have 
their proper place and due consideration. 

THE PENALTY. 

Imperfect co-ordination, whether by procrastina- 
tion or by worry, brings discord. The parts of life 
are at variance with each other. The procrastinator 
looks on past indulgence with remorse and disgust; 
for that past indulgence is now loading him down 
with present disabilities and pains. He looks on 
the future with apprehension, for he knows that his 
present pleasures are purchased at the cost of misery 
and degradation in years to come. 

The man in whom worry and anxiety have be- 
come habitual likewise lives a discordant life. He 
looks out of a joyless present, back on a past devoid 
of interest, and forward into a future full of fears. 



CHAPTER IX. 

Space* 

As all thoughts and actions take place in time, so 
all material things exist in space. Everything we 
have must be in some place. To give things their 
right relations in space is one of the important aspects 

of conduct. 

THE DUTY. 

A place for everything, and everything in its 
place. — Things that belong together should be kept 
together. Dishes belong in the cupboard ; clothes 
in the closet ; boxes on the shelves ; loose papers in 
the waste basket ; tools in the tool-chest ; wood in 
the wood-shed. And it is our duty to keep them in 
their proper place, when not in actual use. In busi- 
ness it is of the utmost importance to have a precise 
place for everything connected with it. The car- 
penter or machinist must have a place for each tool, 
and always put it there when he is through using it. 
The merchant must have a definite book and page 
or drawer or pigeon-hole for every item which he 
records. The scholar must have a set of cards or 
envelopes or drawers or pockets alphabetically ar- 
ranged in which he keeps each class of facts where 
he can turn to it instantly. This keeping things of 
a kind together, each kind in a place by itself, is 

65 



66 SPACE. 

system. Without system nothing can be managed 
well, and no great enterprise can be carried on 
at all. 

THE VIRTUE. 

Orderliness is manly and virtuous because it 
keeps things under our own control, and makes 
them the expression of our will. — The orderly and 
systematic man can manage a thousand details with 
more ease and power than a man without order and 
system can manage a dozen. It is not power to 
do more work than other men, but power to do 
the same amount of work in such an orderly and 
systematic way that it accomplishes a hundred times 
as much as other men's work, which marks the dif- 
ference between the statesman who manages the 
affairs of a nation or the merchant prince who handles 
millions of dollars, and the man of merely ordinary ad- 
ministrative and business ability. 

THE REWARD. 

The orderly man has his resources at his dis- 
posal at a moment's notice. — He can go directly 
to the thing he wants and be sure of finding it in 
its place. When a business is thoroughly system- 
atized it is as easy to find one thing out of ten thou- 
sand as it is to find one thing out of ten. Hence 
there is scarcely any limit to the expansion of 
business of which the systematic man is capable. 
A business thus reduced to system will almost run 
itself. Thus the heads of great concerns are able 
to accept public office, or to spend a year in Europe, 



THE TEMPTATION. 67 

in absolute confidence that the business will be well 
conducted in their absence, and that they can take 
it up when they return just as they left it. For 
they know that each man has his part of the work 
for which he is responsible ; each process has its pre- 
cise method by which it is to be performed ; each ac- 
count has its exact place where it is to be kept. Order 
and system are the keys to business success. Order- 
liness keeps things under our control, and the con- 
venience and efficiency with which things serve us 
is the direct and necessary consequence of having 
them under control. 

THE TEMPTATION. 

System takes more labor to begin with, 
but in the long run system is the greatest labor- 
saving device in the world. — It takes ten times as 
long to hunt up a thing which we have left lying 
around the next time we want it, as it does to put 
it w r here it belongs at first. Yet, well as we know 
this fact, present and temporary ease seems of more 
consequence at the time of action than future and 
permanent convenience. Until by repeated exercise 
and painful discipline we make orderliness and 
system habitual and almost instinctive, the temp- 
tation to make the quickest and handiest disposition 
of things for which we have no immediate use will 
continue to beset our minds and betray our wills. 

THE VICE OF DEFECT. 

The careless man lets things run over him. — 

They mock him, and make fun of him ; getting 



68 SPACE. 

in his way and tripping him up at one time ; hiding 
from him and making him hunt after them at an- 
other. Carelessness is a confession of a weak will 
that cannot keep things under control. And weak- 
ness is ever the mark of vice. 

THE VICE OF EXCESS. 

The end and aim of system is to expedite 
business. Red tape is the idolatry of system. It 
is system for the sake of system. — Every rule 
admits exceptions. To make exceptions before a 
habit is fully formed is dangerous ; and while we 
are learning the habit of orderliness and system we 
should put ourselves to very great inconvenience 
rather than admit an exception to our systematic 
and orderly way of doing things. When, however, 
the habit has become fixed, it is wise and right 
to sacrifice order and system, when some " short 
cut" will attain our end more quickly and effec- 
tively than the regular and more round-about way 
of orderly procedure. The strong and successful 
business man is he who has his system so thor- 
oughly under his control that he can use it or 
dispense with it on a given occasion, according as it 
will further or hinder the end he has in view. 

THE PENALTY. 

The careless man is always bothered by 
things he does not want getting in his way ; and 
by things that he does want keeping out of his 
way. — Half his time is spent in clearing away ac- 



THE PENALTY. 69 

cumulated obstructions and hunting after the things 
he needs. Where everything is in a heap it is 
necessary to haul over a dozen things in order to find 
the one you are after. Carelessness suffers things to 
get the mastery over us ; and the consequence is that 
we and our business are ever at their mercy. And 
as things held in control are faithful and efficient 
servants, so things permitted to domineer over us 
and do as they please become cruel and arbitrary 
masters. They waste our time, try our patience, 
destroy our business, and scatter our fortunes. 



CHAPTER X. 

^Fortune* 

STRICTLY speaking, there is no such thing as for- 
tune, chance, or accident. All things are held to- 
gether by invariable laws, Every event takes place 
in accordance with law. Uniformity of law is the 
condition and presupposition of all our thinking. 
The very idea of an event that has no cause is a 
contradiction in terms to which no reality can cor- 
respond, like the nation of two mountains without 
a valley between ; or a yard stick with only one end. 

Relatively to us, and in consequence of the 
limitation of our knowledge, an event is a result 
of chance or fortune when the cause which pro- 
duced it lies beyond the range of our knowledge. 
What we cannot anticipate beforehand and what 
we cannot account for afterward, we group together 
into a class and ascribe to the fictitious goddess 
Fortune ; as children attribute gifts at Christmas 
which come from unknown sources to Santa Claus. 
In reality these unexplained and unanticipated 
events come from heredity, environment, social in- 
stitutions, the forces of nature, and ultimately from 
God. 

These things which project themselves without 
warning into our lives, often have most momentous 



THE DUTY, 7 1 

influence for good or evil over us ; and the proper 
attitude to take toward this class of objects is 
worthy of consideration by itself. 

THE DUTY. 

The secret of superiority to fortune. — Some 

things are under our control ; others are not. It is 
the part of wisdom to concentrate our thought and 
feeling on the former; working with utmost dili- 
gence to make the best use of those things which 
are committed to us in the regular line of daily duty, 
and treating with comparative indifference those 
things which affect us from without. What we are ; 
what we do ; what we strive for ; — these are the 
really important matters ; and these are always in 
our power. What money comes to us ; what peo- 
ple say about us ; what positions we are called to 
fill ; to what parties we are invited ; to what offices 
we are elected, are matters which concern to some 
extent our happiness. We should welcome these 
good things when they come. But they affect the 
accidents rather than the substance of our lives. 
We should not be too much bound up in them when 
they come ; and we should not grieve too deeply 
when they go. We should never stake our well- 
being and our peace of mind on their presence or 
their absence. We should remember that "The 
aids to noble life are all within." 

This lesson of superiority to fortune, by regarding 
the things she has to give as comparatively indiffer- 
ent, is the great lesson of Stoicism. Marcus Aure- 



72 FORTUNE, 

lius, Epictetus, and Seneca are the masters of this 
school. Their lesson is one we all need to learn 
thoroughly. It is the secret of strength to endure 
the ills of life with serenity and fortitude. And yet 
it is by no means a complete account of our duty to- 
ward these outward things. It is closely akin to 
pride and self-sufficiency. It gives strength but not 
sweetness to life. One must be able to do without 
the good things of fortune if need be. The really 
strong man, however, is he who can use and enjoy 
them without being made dependent on them or 
being enslaved by them. The real mastery of for- 
tune consists not in doing without the things she 
brings for fear they will corrupt and enslave us ; 
but in compelling her to give us all the things we 
can, and then refusing to bow down to her in hope 
of getting more. This just appreciation of for- 
tune's gifts is doubtless hard to combine with 
perfect independence. The Stoic solution of the 
problem is easier. The really strong man, however, 
is he who 

Gathers earth's whole good into his arms ; 
Marching to fortune, not surprised by her, 

and the secret of this conquest of fortune without 
being captivated by her lies in having, as Browning 

telling us, 

One great aim, like a guiding star above, 
Which tasks strength, wisdom, stateliness, to lift 
His manhood to the height that takes the prize. 

The shortcoming of the Stoics is not in the super- 



THE VIRTUE. 73 

iority to fortune which they seek ; but in the fact 
that they seek it directly by sheer effort of naked 
will, instead of being lifted above subjection to for- 
tune by the attractive power of generous aims, and 
high ideals of social service. 

THE VIRTUE. 

The virtue which maintains superiority over 
external things and forces is courage. — In prim- 
itive times the chief form of fortune was physical 
danger, and superiority to fear of physical injury 
was the original meaning of courage. Courage 
involves this physical bravery still ; but it has come 
to include a great deal more. In a civilized com- 
munity, physical danger is comparatively rare. 
Courage to do right when everyone around us is 
doing wrong; courage to say " No" when everyone 
is trying to make us say " Yes " ; courage to bear 
uncomplainingly the inevitable ills of life ; — these are 
the forms of courage most frequently demanded 
and most difficult to exercise in the peaceful security 
of a civilized community. This courage which pre- 
sents an unruffled front to trouble, and bears 
bravely the steady pressure of untoward circum- 
stance, we call by the special names of fortitude or 
patience. Patience and fortitude are courage exer- 
cised in the conditions of modern life. The essence 
of courage is superiority to outside forces and influ- 
ences. When men were beset by lions and tigers, 
by Indians and hostile armies, then courage showed 
itself by facing and fighting these enemies. Now 



74 FORTUNE. 

that we live with civilized and friendly men and 
women like ourselves, courage shows itself chiefly by 
refusing to surrender our convictions of what is true 
and right just because other people will like us bet- 
ter if we pretend to think as they do ; and by 
enduring without flinching the rubs and bumps and 
bruises which this close contact with our fellows 
brings to us. 

Moral courage. — The brave man everywhere is 
the man who has a firm purpose in his own breast, 
and goes forth to carry out that purpose in spite of 
all opposition, or solicitation, or influence of any kind 
that would tend to make him do otherwise. He 
does the same, whether men blame or approve ; 
whether it bring him pain or pleasure, profit or loss. 
The purpose that is in him, that he declares, that he 
maintains, that he lives to realize ; in defense of that 
he will lay down wealth, reputation, and, if need be, 
life itself. He will be himself, if he is to live at all. 
Men must approve what he really is, or he will have 
none of their praise, but their blame rather. By no 
pretense of being what he is not, by no betrayal of 
what he holds to be true and right, will he gain their 
favor. The power to stand alone with truth and 
right against the world is the test of moral courage. 
The brave man plants himself on the eternal foun- 
dations of truth and justice, and bids defiance to all 
the forces that would drive him from it. 

Wordsworth, in his character of " The Happy 
Warrior/' has portrayed the kind of courage de- 
manded of the modern man: 



THE REWARD. 75 

'Tis he whose law is reason ; who depends 
Upon that law as on the best of friends. 
Who if he rise to station of command 
Rises by open means, and there will stand 
On honorable terms, or else retire, 
And in himself possess his own desire : 
Who comprehends his trust, and to the same 
Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim ; 
And therefore does not stoop nor lie in wait 
For wealth, or honors, or for worldly state ; 
Whom they must follow, on whose head must fall 
Like showers of manna, if they come at all. 
'Tis finally the man, who, lifted high, 
Conspicuous object in a nation's eye, 
Or left unthought of in obscurity, 
Who with a toward or untoward lot, 
Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not, 
Plays in the many games of life, that one 
Where what he most doth value must be won : 
Whom neither shape of danger can dismay, 
Nor thought of tender happiness betray ; 
Who, not content that former worth stand fast, 
Looks forward, persevering to the last, 
From well to better, daily self-surpast : 
This is the happy warrior ; this is he 
That every man in arms should wish to be. 

THE REWARD. 

Courage universally honored. — There is some- 
thing in this strong, steady power of self-assertion 
that compels the admiration of everyone who beholds 
it. When we see a man standing squarely on his own 
feet ; speaking plainly the thoughts that are in his 
mind ; doing fearlessly what he believes to be right ; 
or no matter how widely we may differ from his views, 



7 6 FORTUNE. 

disapprove his deeds, we cannot withhold our honor 
from the man himself. No man was ever held in 
veneration by his countrymen ; no man ever handed 
down to history an undying fame, who did not have 
the courage to speak and act his real thought and 
purpose in defiance of the revilings and persecutions 
of his fellows. 

THE TEMPTATION. 

To take one's fortune into his own hands and 
work out, in spite of opposition and misfortune, a 
satisfactory career tasks strength and resolution 
to the utmost.— It is so much more easy to give 
over the determination of our fate to some outside 
power that the abject surrender to fortune is a serious 
temptation. Air-castles and day-dreams, and idle 
waiting for something to turn up, are the feeble forms 
of this temptation. The impulse to run away from 
danger, and the impulse to plunge recklessly into 
risks, are the two forms of temptation which lead to 
the more pronounced and prevalent vices. 

THE VICE OF DEFECT. 

Yielding to outward pressure, contrary to 
our own conviction of what is true and right, is 
moral cowardice. — In early times the coward was 
the man who turned his back in battle. To-day 
the coward is the man who does differently when 
people are looking at him from what he would do 
if he were alone ; the man who speaks what he 
thinks people want to hear, instead of what he 



THE VICE OF EXCESS. 77 

knows to be true ; the man who apes other people 
for fear they will think him odd if he acts like him- 
self ; the man who tries so hard to suit everybody 
that he has no mind of his own ; the man who 
thinks how things will look, instead of thinking how 
things really are. Whenever we take the determin- 
ation of our course of conduct ultimately from any 
other source than our own firm conviction of what 
is right and true, then we play the coward. We do 
in the peaceful conditions of modern life just what 
we despise a soldier for doing on the field of battle. 
We acknowledge that there is something outside 
us that is stronger than we are ; of which we are 
afraid ; to which we surrender ourselves as base 
and abject slaves. 

THE VICE OF EXCESS. 

There are forces in the world that can destroy 
us ; we must protect ourselves against them. — 

To be truly brave, we must be ready to face these 
forces when there is a reason for so doing. We 
must be ready to face the cannon for our country ; 
to plunge into the swollen stream to save the drown- 
ing child ; to expose ourselves to contagious diseases 
in order to nurse the sick. 

To do these things without sufficient reason is 
foolhardiness. To expose ourselves needlessly to 
disease ; to put ourselves in the range of a cannon, 
to jump into the stream, with no worthy end in 
view, or for the very shallow reason of showing off 
how brave we can be, is folly and madness. Doing 



78 FORTUNE. 

such things because someone dares us to do them 
is not courage, but cowardice. 

Gambling, the most fatal form of this fondness 
for taking needless risks. — The gambler is too 
feeble in will, too empty in mind, too indolent in 
body to carve out his destiny with his own right 
hand. And so he stakes his well-being on the 
throw of the dice ; the turn of a wheel ; or the 
speed of a horse. This invocation of fortune is a 
confession of the man's incompetence and inability 
to solve the problem of his life satisfactorily by his 
own exertions. It is the most demoralizing of 
practices. For it establishes the habit of staking 
well-being not on one's own honest efforts, but on 
outside influences and forces. It is the dethrone- 
ment of will and the deposition of manhood. 

In addition to being degrading to the individual 
it is injurious toothers. It is anti-social. It makes 
one man's gain depend on another's loss : while the 
social welfare demands that gains shall in all cases 
be mutual. It violates the fundamental law of 
equivalence. 

Since the essence of gambling is the abrogation 
of the will, every indulgence weakens the power 
to resist the temptation. Gambling soon becomes 
a mania. Honest ways of earning money seem slow 
and dull. And the habit becomes confirmed before 
the victim is aware of the power over him that it 
has gained. Every form of gain which is contingent 
upon another's loss partakes of the nature of gam- 
bling. Raffling, playing for stakes, betting, buying 



THE PENALTY. 79 

lottery tickets, speculation in which there is no real 
transfer of goods, but mere winning or losing on the 
fluctuations of the market, are all forms of gambling. 
They are all animated by the desire to get some- 
thing for nothing: a desire which we can respect 
when a helpless pauper asks for alms ; but of which 
in any form an able-bodied man ought to be 
ashamed. 

THE PENALTY. 

The shame of cowardice. — Man is meant to be 
superior to things outside him. When we see him 
bowing down to somebody whom he does not 
really believe in ; when we see him yielding to 
forces w r hich he does not himself respect ; when 
living is more to him than living well; when there 
is a threat which can make him cringe, or a bribe 
that can make his tongue speak false — then we 
feel that the manhood has gone out of him, and we 
cannot help looking on his fall with sorrow and with 
shame. The penalty which follows moral cowardice 
is nowhere more clearly stated than in these severe 
and solemn lines which Whittier wrote when he 
thought a great man had sacrificed his convictions 
to his desire for office and love of popularity: 

So fallen ! so lost ! the light withdrawn 

Which once he wore ! 
The glory from his gray hairs gone 

Fore verm ore ! 

Of all we loved and honored, naught 
Save power remains, — 



8o FORTUNE. 



A fallen angel's pride of thought, 
Still strong in chains. 

All else is gone, from those great eyes 

The soul has fled : 
When faith is lost, when honor dies, 

The man is dead ! 

Then pay the reverence of old days 

To his dead fame ; 
Walk backward, with averted gaze, 

And hide the shame. 



CHAPTER XL 

mature, 

THUS far we have been considering the uses to 
which we may put the particular things which 
nature places at our disposal. In addition to these 
special uses of particular objects, Nature has a 
meaning as a whole. The Infinite Reason in whose 
image our minds are formed and in whose thought 
our thinking, so far as it is true, partakes, has ex- 
pressed something of his wisdom, truth, and beauty, 
in the forms and laws of the world in which we live. 
In the study of Nature we are thinking God's 
thoughts after him. In contemplation of the glory 
of the heavens, in admiration of the beauty of 
field and stream and forest, we are beholding a 
loveliness which it was his delight to create, and 
which it is elevating and ennobling for us to look 
upon. Nature is the larger, fairer, fuller expression 
of that same intelligence and love which wells up in 
the form of consciousness within our own breasts. 
Nature and the soul of man are children of the 
same Father. Nature is the interpretation of the 
longings of our hearts. Hence when we are alone 
with Nature in the woods and fields, by the sea- 
shore or on the moon-lit lake, we feel at peace with 
ourselves, and at home in the world. 

8* 



32 NATURE. 

THE DUTY. 

The love of nature, like all love, cannot be 
forced. — It is not directly under the control of our 
will. We cannot set about it in deliberate fashion, 
as we set about earning a living. Still it can be 
cultivated. We can place ourselves in contact with 
Nature's more impressive aspects. We can go 
away by ourselves ; stroll through the woods, 
watch the clouds ; bask in the sunshine ; brave the 
storm; listen to the notes of birds; find out the 
haunts of living creatures ; learn the times and 
places in which to find the flowers ; gaze upon the 
glowing sunset, and look up into the starry skies. 
If we thus keep close to Nature, she will draw us to 
herself, and whisper to us more and more of her 
hidden meaning. 

The eye — it cannot choose but see ; 

We cannot bid the year be still : 
Our bodies feel, where'er they be, 

Against or with our will. 

Nor less I deem that there are powers 
Which of themselves our minds impress ; 

That we can feed these minds of ours 
In a wise passiveness. 

THE VIRTUE. 

The more we feel of the beauty and signifi- 
cance of Nature the more we become capable of 
feeling. — And this capacity to feel the influences 
which Nature is constantly throwing around us is 
an indispensable element in noble and elevated 



THE REWARD. 83 

character. Our thoughts, our acts, yes, our very 
forms and features reflect the objects which we 
habitually welcome to our minds and hearts. And 
if we will have these expressions of ourselves noble 
and pure, we must drink constantly and deeply at 
Nature's fountains of beauty and truth. Words- 
worth, the greatest interpreter of Nature, thus de- 
scribes the effect of Nature's influence upon a sensi- 
tive soul : 

She shall be sportive as the fawn 
That wild with glee across the lawn 

Or up the mountain springs ; 
And hers shall be the breathing balm, 
And hers the silence and the calm 

Of mute, insensate things. 

The floating clouds their state shall lend 
To her ; for her the willow bend ; 

Xor shall she fail to see, 
Even in the motions of the storm, 
Grace that shall mold the maiden's form 

By silent sympathy. 

The stars of midnight shall be dear 
To her ; and she shall lean her ear 

In many a secret place 
Where rivulets dance their wayward round, 
And Beauty born of murmuring sound 

Shall pass into her face. 

THE REWARD. 

The uplifting and purifying power of nature. — 

Through communion with the grandeur and majesty 



H NA TURE. 

of Nature, our lives are lifted to loftier and 
purer heights than our unaided wills could ever 
gain. We grow into the likeness of that we love. 
We are transformed into the image of that which 
we contemplate and adore. We are thus made 
strong to resist the base temptations ; patient to en- 
dure the petty vexations ; brave to oppose the 
brutal injustices, of daily life. This whole subject 
of the power of Nature to uplift and bless has been 
so exhaustively and beautifully expressed by Words- 
worth, that fidelity to the subject makes continued 
quotation necessary: 

Nature never did betray 
The heart that loved her ; 'tis her privilege, 
Through all the years of this our life, to lead 
From joy to joy : for she can so inform 
The mind that is within us, so impress 
With quietness and beauty, and so feed 
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, 
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, 
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all 
The dreary intercourse of daily life, 
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb 
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold 
Is full of blessings. 

Therefore am I still 
A lover of the meadows and the woods 
And mountains ; and of all that we behold 
From this green earth ; well pleased to recognize 
In Nature and the language of the sense 
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, 
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul 
Of all my moral being. 



THE TEMPTATION. 85 

THE TEMPTATION. 

The very thoroughness and fidelity with 
which we fulfill one duty, may hinder the fulfill- 
ment of another. — We may become so absorbed 
in earning a living, and carrying on our business, 
and getting an education, that we shall give no 
time or attention to this communion with Nature. 
The fact that business, education, and kindred ex- 
ternal and definite pursuits are directly under the 
control of our wills, while this power to appreciate 
Nature is a slow and gradual growth, only indirectly 
under our control, tempts us to give all our time 
and strength to these immediate, practical ends, 
and to neglect that closer walk with Nature which 
is essential to a true appreciation of her loveliness. 
Someone asks us " What is the use of spending 
your time with the birds among the trees, or on the 
hill-top under the stars ? " and we cannot give him 
an answer in dollars and cents. And so we are 
tempted to take his simple standard of utility in 
ministering to physical wants as the standard of all 
worth. We neglect Nature, and she hides her face 
from our preoccupied eyes. In this busy, restless 
age we need to keep ever in mind Wordsworth's 
warning against this fatal temptation : 

The world is too much with us ; late and soon, 
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers : 

Little we see in Nature that is ours ; 

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon ! 



86 NA TURE. 

THE VICE OF DEFECT. 

This obtuseness does not come upon us suddenly. 
All children keenly appreciate the changing moods 
of Nature. It is from neglect to open our hearts to 
Nature, that obtuseness comes. It steals over us 
imperceptibly. We can correct it only by giving 
ourselves more closely and constantly to Nature, 
and trusting her to win back to herself our be- 
numbed and alienated hearts. 

THE VICE OF EXCESS. 

Affectation the attempt to work up by our own 
efforts an enthusiasm for Nature. — True love of 
Nature must be born within us, by the working of 
Nature herself upon our hearts. By faith, rather 
than by works ; by reception, rather than by con- 
quest ; by wise passiveness, rather than by restless 
haste ; by calm and silence, rather than by noise 
and talk, our sensitiveness to Nature's charms is 
deepened and developed. That enjoyment of 
Nature which comes spontaneously and unsought 
is the only true enjoyment. That which we work 
up, and plan for, and talk about, is a poor and 
feeble imitation. The real lover of Nature is not 
the one who can talk glibly about her to every- 
body, and on all occasions. It is he who loves 
to be alone with her, who steals away from men 
and things to find solitude with her the best 
society, who knows not whence cometh nor 



THE PENALTY. 87 

whither goeth his delight in her companionship, 
who waits patiently in her presence, and is content 
whether she gives or withholds her special favors, 
who cares more for Nature herself than for this or 
that striking sensation she may arouse. Affectation 
is the craving for sensations regardless of their 
source. And if Nature is chary of striking scenes 
and startling impressions and thrilling experiences, 
affectation, with profane haste, proceeds to amuse 
itself with artificial feelings, and pretended raptures. 
This counterfeited appreciation, like all counter- 
feits, by its greater cheapness drives out the'real 
enjoyment ; and the person who indulges in affecta- 
tion soon finds the power of genuine appreciation 
entirely gone. Affectation is worse than obtuse- 
ness, for obtuseness is at least honest : it may mend 
its ways. But affectation is self-deception. The 
affected person does not know what true apprecia- 
tion of Nature is : he cannot see his error; and con- 
sequently cannot correct it. 

THE PENALTY. 

The life of man can be no deeper and richer 
than the objects and thoughts on which it feeds. 

— Without appreciation and love for Nature we 
can eat and drink and sleep and do our work. 
The horse and ox, however, can do as much. Obtuse- 
ness to the beauty and meaning of Nature sinks us 
to the level of the brutes. Cut off from the springs 
of inspiration, our lives stagnate, our souls shrivel, 
our sensibilities wither. And just as stagnant 



SS MA TURE. 

water soon becomes impure, and swarms with low 
forms of vegetable and animal life, so the stag- 
nant soul, which refuses to reflect the beauty of 
sun and star and sky, soon becomes polluted with 
sordidness and selfishness and sensuality. 



CHAPTER XII. 

Hrt, 

Nature is incomplete. She leaves man to provide 
for himself his raiment, shelter, and surroundings. 
Nature in her works throws out suggestions of 
beauty, rather than its perfect and complete embodi- 
ment. Her gold is imbedded in the rock. Her 
creations are limited by the particular material 
and the narrow conditions which are at her disposal 
at a given time and place. To seize the pure 
ideal of beauty which Nature suggests, but never 
quite realizes; to select from the universe of space 
and the eternity of time those materials and forms 
which are perfectly adapted to portray the ideal 
beauty ; to clothe the abodes and the whole phys- 
ical environment of man with that beauty which 
is suggested to us in sky and stream and field 
and flower ; to present to us for perpetual contem- 
plation the form and features of ideal manhood and 
womanhood; to hold before our imagination the 
deeds of brave men, and the devotion of saintly 
women ; to thrill our hearts with the victorious 
struggle of the hero and the death-defying passion 
of the lover ; — this is the mission and the signifi- 
cance of art. 

Art is creative. The artist is a co-worker with 

s 9 



90 ART. 

God. To his hands is committed the portion 
of the world which God has left unfinished — 
the immediate environment of man. We cannot 
live in the fields, like beasts and savages. 
Art has for its purpose to make the rooms and 
houses and halls and streets and cities in which 
civilized men pass their days as beautiful and fair, 
as elevating and inspiring, as the fields and forests in 
which the primeval savage roamed. More than 
that, art aims to fill these rooms and halls and 
streets of ours with forms and symbols which shall 
preserve, for our perpetual admiration and inspira- 
tion, all that is purest and noblest and sweetest in 
that long struggle of man up from his savage to his 
civilized estate. 

THE DUTY. 

Beauty is the outward and visible sign of in- 
ward perfection, completeness, and harmony. — 

In an object of beauty there is neither too little nor 
too much ; nothing is out of place ; nothing is with- 
out its contribution to the perfect whole. Each part 
is at once means and end to every other. Hence its 
perfect symmetry ; its regular proportions ; its strict 
conformity to law. 

The mind of man can find rest and satisfaction in 
nothing short of perfection ; and consequently our 
hearts are never satisfied until they behold beauty, 
which is perfection's crown and seal. Without it 
one of the deepest and divinest powers of our nature 
remains dwarfed, stifled, and repressed. 



THE VIRTUE. 9 1 

How to cultivate the love of beauty. — It is our 

duty to see to it that everything under our con- 
trol is as beautiful as we can make it. The rooms 
we live in ; the desk at which we work ; the 
clothes we wear; the house we build ; the pictures 
on our walls; the garden and grounds in which 
we walk and work; all must have some form or 
other. That form must be either beautiful or hide- 
ous; attractive or repulsive. It is our duty to pay 
attention to these things; to spend thought and 
labor, and such money as we can afford upon them, 
in order to make them minister to our delight. Not 
in staring at great works of art which we have not 
yet learned to appreciate, but by attention to 
the beauty or ugliness of the familiar objects 
that we have about us and dwell with from day 
to day, we shall best cultivate that love of beauty 
which will ultimately make intelligible to us the 
true significance of the masterpieces of art. Here 
as everywhere, to him that hath shall more be given. 
We must serve beauty humbly and faithfully in 
the little things of daily life, if we will enjoy her 
treasures in the great galleries of the world. 

THE VIRTUE. 

Beauty is a jealous mistress. — If we trifle with 
her ; if we fall in love with pretentious imitations 
and elaborate ornamentations which have no beauty 
in them, but are simply gotten up to sell ; then the 
true and real beauty will never again suffer us to 
see her face. She will leave us to our idols : and 



9 2 ART. 

our power to appreciate and admire true beauty will 
die out. 

Fidelity to beauty requires that we have no more 
things than we can either use in our work, or enjoy 
in our rest. And these things that we do have 
must be either perfectly plain ; or else the ornamen- 
tation about them must be something that expresses 
a genuine admiration and affection of our hearts. 
A farmer's kitchen is generally a much more attrac- 
tive place than his parlor; just because this law of 
simplicity is perfectly expressed in the one, and flag- 
rantly violated in the other. The study of a scholar, 
the office of the lawyer and the business man, is not 
infrequently a more beautiful place, one in which a 
man feels more at home, than his costly drawing 
room. What sort of things we shall have, and 
how many, cannot be determined for us by any 
general rule ; still less by aping somebody else. In 
our housekeeping, as in everything else, we should 
begin with the few things that are absolutely essen- 
tial ; and then add decoration and ornament only so 
fast as we can find the means of gratifying cherished 
longings for forms of beauty which we have learned 
to admire and love. " Simplicity of life," says 
William Morris, " even the barest, is not a misery, 
but the very foundation of refinement: a sanded 
floor and whitewashed walls, and the green trees, 
and flowery meads, and living waters outside. If 
you cannot learn to love real art, at least learn to 
hate sham art and reject it. If the real thing is not 
to be had, learn to do without it. If you want a 



THE REWARD. 93 

golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it : Have 
nothing in your houses that you do not know to be 
useful, or believe to be beautiful." 

THE REWARD. 

The refining influence of beauty. — Devotion to 
art and beauty in simplicity and sincerity develops 
an ever increasing capacity for its enjoyment. As 
Keats, the master poet of pure beauty, tells us, 

A thing of beauty is a joy forever : 

Its loveliness increases ; it will never 

Pass into nothingness ; but still will keep 

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep, 

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. 

The refining influence of the love of beauty 
draws us mysteriously and imperceptibly, but none 
the less powerfully, away from what is false in 
thought and base in action ; and develops a deep 
and lasting affinity for all that is true and good. 
The good, the true, and the beautiful are branches 
of a common root; members of a single whole: and 
if one of these members suffer, all the members 
suffer with it ; and if one is honored, all are honored 
with it. 

THE TEMPTATION. 

Luxury the perversion of beauty. — Luxury is 
the pleasure of possession, instead of pleasure in 
the thing possessed. Luxury buys things, not 
because it likes them, but because it likes to have 
them. And so the luxurious man fills his house 



94 ART. 

with all sorts of things, not because he finds de- 
light in these particular things, and wants to share 
that delight with all his friends ; but because he 
supposes these are the proper things to have, and 
he wants everybody to know that he has them. 

The man who buys things in this way does not 
know what he wants. Consequently he gets cheated. 
He buys ugly things as readily as beautiful things, 
if only the seller is shrewd enough to make him be- 
lieve they are fashionable. Others, less intelligent 
than this man, see what he has done; take for granted 
that because he has done it, it must be the proper 
thing to do ; and go and do likewise. Thus taste 
becomes dulled and deadened; the costly and 
elaborate drives out the plain and simple ; the de- 
sire for luxury kills out the love of beauty ; and art 
expires. 

THE VICE OF DEFECT. 

Ugly surroundings make ugly souls. — The 

outward and the inward are bound fast together. 
The beauty or ugliness of the objects we have 
about us are the standing # choices of our wills. 
As the object, so is the subject. We grow into the 
likeness of what we look upon. Without harmony 
and beauty to feed upon, the love of beauty starves 
and dies. Our hearts become cold and hard. Not 
being called out in admiration and delight, our feel- 
ings brood over mean and sensual pleasures ; they 
dwell upon narrow and selfish concerns ; they 
fasten upon the accumulation of wealth or the van- 



THE VICE OF EXCESS. 95 

quishing of a rival, as substitutes for the nobler in- 
terests that have vanished ; and the heart becomes 
sordid, sensual, mean, petty, spiteful, and ugly. 
The spirit of man, like nature, abhors a vacuum ; 
and into the heart from which the love of the beau- 
tiful has been suffered to depart, these hideous and 
ugly traits of character make haste to enter, and 
occupy the vacant space. What Shakspere says 
of a single art, music, is true of art and beauty in 
general : 

The man that hath no music in himself, 

Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds, 

Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils : 

The motions of his spirit are dulj as night, 

And his affections dark as Erebus. 

Let no such man be trusted. 

THE VICE OF EXCESS. 

The hollowness of ostentation. — Man is never 
proud of what he really enjoys ; never vain of what 
he truly loves ; never anxious to show off the tastes 
and interests that are essentially his own. In order 
to take this false attitude toward an object, it is 
necessary to hold it apart from ourselves : a thing 
which the true lover can never do. He who loves 
beautiful things will indeed wish others to share his 
joy in them. But this sharing of our joy in beauti- 
ful objects, is a very different thing from showing 
off our fine things, simply to let other people know 
that we have them. Ostentation is the vice of 
ignorant wealth and vulgar luxury. It estimates 
objects by their expensiveness rather than by their 



9 6 ART. 

beauty ; it aims to awaken in ourselves pride rather 
than pleasure ; and to arouse in others astonishment 
rather than admiration. 

THE PENALTY. 

Vulgarity akin to laziness.— Art, and the beauty 
which it creates, costs painstaking labor to pro- 
duce. And to enjoy it when it is produced, re- 
quires at first thoughtful and discriminating atten- 
tion. The formation of a correct taste is a growth, 
not a gift. Hence the dull, the lazy, and the indif- 
ferent never acquire this cultivated taste for the 
beautiful in art. This lack of perception, this inca- 
pacity for enjoyment of the beautiful, is vulgarity. 
Vulgarity is contentment with what is common, and 
to be had on easy terms. The root of it is laziness. 
The mark of it is stupidity. 

At great pains the race has worked out beautiful 
forms of speech, for communicating our ideas to each 
other. Vulgarity in speech is too lazy to observe 
these precise and beautiful forms of expression ; 
it clips its words ; throws its sentences together with- 
out regard to grammar; falls into slang; draws its 
figures from the coarse and low and sensual side of 
life, instead of from its pure and noble aspects. 

Vulgarity with reference to dress, dwellings, 
pictures, reading, is of the same nature. It results 
from the dull, unmeaning gaze with which one looks 
at things ; the shiftless, slipshod way of doing work ; 
the " don't care" habit of mind which calls any- 
thing that happens to fall in its way " good enough." 



THE PENALTY. 97 

From all that is precious and beautiful and lovely 
the vulgar man is hopelessly excluded. They are 
all around him ; but he has no eyes to see, no 
taste to appreciate, no heart to respond to them. 
" All things excellent," so Spinoza tells us, " are 
as difficult as they are rare/' The vulgar man has 
no heart for difficulty ; and hence the rare excel- 
lence of art and beauty remain forever beyond his 
reach. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Bnimais, 

ANIMALS stand midway between things and per- 
sons. We own them, use them, kill them, even, for 
our own purposes. Yet they have feelings, impulses, 
and affections in common with ourselves. In some 
respects they surpass us. In strength, in speed, in 
keenness of scent, in fidelity, blind instinct in the 
animal is often superior to reason in the man. 

Yet the animal falls short of personality. It is 
conscious, but not self-conscious. It knows ; but it 
does not know that it knows. It can perform as- 
tonishing feats of intelligence. But it cannot ex- 
plain, even to itself, the way in which it does them. 
The animal can pass from one particular experience 
to another along lines of association in time and 
space with marvelous directness and accuracy. To 
rise from a particular experience to the universal 
class to which that experience belongs ; and then, 
from the known characteristics of the class, to de- 
duce the characteristics of another particular experi- 
ence of the same kind, is beyond the power of the 
brute. 

The brute likewise has feelings ; but it does not 
recognize these feelings as parts of a total and per- 
manent self. Pleasure and pain the animal feels 

9 8 



THE DUTY. 99 

probably as keenly as we do. Of happiness or un- 
happiness they probably know nothing. 

They do not sweat and whine about their condition, 
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, 
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth. 

Animals can be trained to do right, but they can- 
not love righteousness. They can be trained to 
avoid acts which are associated with painful conse- 
quences, but they cannot hate iniquity. The life 
of an animal is a series of sensations, impulses, 
thoughts, and actions. These are never gathered 
up into unity. The animal is more than a machine, 
and less than a person. 

THE DUTY. 

We ought to realize that the animal has feel- 
ings as keen as our own. — We owe to these feelings 
in the animal the same treatment that we would wish 
for the same feelings in ourselves. For animals as 
for ourselves we should seek as much pleasure and 
as little pain as is consistent with the perform- 
ance of the work which we think it best to lay upon 
them. The horse cannot choose for itself how 
heavy a load to draw. We ought to adapt the load 
to its strength. And in order to do that we must 
stop and consider how much strength it has. The 
horse and cow and dog cannot select their own food 
and shelter. We must think for them in these 
matters; and in order to do so wisely, we must 
consider their nature, habits, and capacities. No 



100 ANIMALS. 

person is fit to own an animal, who is not willing to 
take the trouble to understand the needs, capacities, 
and nature of that animal. And acts which result 
from ignorance of such facts as can be readily- 
learned are inexcusable. 

THE VIRTUE. 

Kindness is the recognition that a feeling of 
another being is of just as much consequence as 
a feeling of my own. — Now we have seen that in 
some respects animals are precisely like ourselves. 
Kindness recognizes this bond of the kind, or kin- 
ship, as far as it extends. Kindness to animals does 
not go so far as kindness to our fellow-men ; because 
the kinship between animals and man does not ex- 
tend as far as kinship between man and man. So 
far as it does extend, however, kindness to animals 
treats them as we should wish to be treated by a 
person who had us in his power. Kindness will 
inflict no needless suffering upon an animal ; make 
no unreasonable requirement of it ; expose it to no 
needless privation. 

THE REWARD. 

Kindness toward animals reacts upon our 
hearts, making them tender and sympathetic. — 

Every act we perform leaves its trace in tendency 
to act in the same way again. And in its effect 
upon ourselves it matters little whether the objects 
on which our kindness has been bestowed have 
been high or low in the scale of being. In any 
case the effect remains with us in increased 



THE TEMPTATION. 101 

tenderness, not only toward the particular objects 
which have called it forth, but toward all sentient 
beings. Kindness to animals opens our hearts 
toward God and our fellow-men. 

He prayeth well, who loveth well 
Both man and bird and beast. 

He prayeth best who loveth best 
All things both great and small ; 
For the dear God who loveth us, 
He made and loveth all. 

THE TEMPTATION. 

We are tempted to forget this sensitive nature 
of the animal, and to treat it as a mere thing.— 

We have a perfect right to sacrifice the pleasure of 
an animal to the welfare of ourselves. We have no 
right to sacrifice the welfare of the animal to our 
capricious feelings. We have no right to neglect an 
animal from sheer unwillingness to give it the re- 
sonable attention which is necessary to provide it 
with proper food, proper care, proper shelter, and 
proper exercise. A little girl, reproved for neglect- 
ing to feed her rabbits, when asked indignantly by 
her father, " Don't you love your rabbits ? " replied, 
" Yes, I love them better than I love to feed them." 
This love which doesn't love to feed is sentimental- 
ity, the fundamental vice of all personal relations, 
of which we shall hear more later. The temptation 
arises even here in our relations to the animal. It 
is always so much easier to neglect a claim made 
upon us from without, than to realize and respect it. 



102 ANIMALS. 

THE VICE OF DEFECT. 

Ignorant or willful disregard of the nature and 
welfare of an animal is cruelty.— Overloading 
beasts of burden ; driving them when lame ; keep- 
ing them on insufficient food, or in dark, cold, and 
unhealthy quarters ; whipping, goading, and beat- 
ing them constantly and excessively are the most 
common forms of cruelty to animals. Pulling flies 
to pieces, stoning frogs, robbing birds* nests are 
forms of cruelty of which young children are often 
guilty before they are old enough to reflect that 
their sport is purchased at the cost of frightful pain 
to these poor innocent and defenseless creatures. 
The simple fact that we are strong and they are 
weak ought to make evident, to anyone capable of 
the least reflection, how mean a thing it is to take 
advantage of our superior strength and knowledge 
to inflict pain on one of these creatures which nature 
has placed under the protection of our superior 
power and knowledge, and lead us to resolve 

Never to blend our pleasure or our pride 
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels. 

THE VICE OF EXCESS. 

Subjection to animals degrading.— The animals 
are vastly inferior to man in dignity and worth. 
Many of them have strong wills of their own, and if 
we will allow it, will run over us, and have their own 
way in spite of us. Such subjection of a man or 
woman to an animal is a most shameful sight. To 



THE PENALTY. 103 

have dominion over them is man's prerogative ; and 
to surrender that prerogative is to abrogate our 
humanity. 

This subjection of a person to an animal may 
come about through a morbid and sentimental affec- 
tion for an animal. When a man or a woman makes 
an animal so much of a pet that every caprice of 
the cat or dog is law ; when the whole arrange- 
ments of the household are made to yield to its 
whims ; when affections that are withheld from 
earnest work and human service are lavished in 
profusion on a pug or a canary ; there again we 
see the order of rank in the scale of dignity and 
worth inverted, and the human bowing to the 
beast. 

THE PENALTY. 

Inhumanity to brutes brutalizes humanity. — 

If we refuse by consideration and kindness to lift 
the brute up into our human sympathy, and recog- 
nize in it the rights and feelings which it has in 
common with us, then we sink to the unfeeling and 
brutal level to which our cruelty seeks to consign 
the brutes. Every cruel blow inflicted on an animal 
leaves an ugly scar in our own hardened hearts, 
which mars and destroys our capacity for the 
gentlest and sweetest sympathy with our fellow- 
men. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

3fellow=men, 

" Units homo, nullus homo " is a Latin proverb 
which means that one man alone is no man at all. 
A man who should be neither son, brother, husband, 
father, neighbor, citizen, or friend is inconceivable. 
To try to think of such a man is like trying to think 
of a stone without size, weight, surface, or color. 
Man is by nature a social being. Apart from 
society man would not be man. " Whosoever is 
delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god/' 
To take out of a man all that he gets from his rela- 
tions to other men would be to take out of him 
kindness, compassion, sympathy, love, loyalty, de- 
votion, gratitude, and heroism. It would reduce 
him to the level of the brutes. What water is to 
the fish, what air is to the bird, that association 
with his fellow-men is to a man. It is as necessary 
to the soul as food and raiment are to the body. 
Only as we see ourselves reflected in the praise or 
blame, the love or hate of others do we become 
conscious of ourselves. 

THE DUTY. 

Since our fellow-men are so essential to us and 
we to them, it is our duty to live in as intimate 
fellowship with them as possible. — The funda- 

104 



THE DUTY. 105 

mental form of fellowship is hospitality. By the 
fireside and around the family table we feel most 
free, and come nearest to one another. Without 
hospitality, such intercourse is impossible. Hospi- 
tality, in order to fulfill its mission of fellowship, 
must be genuine, sincere, and simple. True hospi- 
tality welcomes the guest to our hearts as well as to 
our homes ; and the invitation to our homes when 
our hearts are withheld is a hollow mockery. It 
is a dangerous thing to have our bodies where our 
hearts are not. For we acquire the habit of con- 
cealing our real selves, and showing only the surface 
of our natures to others. We become hollow, 
unreal, hypocritical. We live and move 

Trick'd in disguises, alien to the rest 
Of men and alien to ourselves — and yet 
The same heart beats in every human breast. 

Fellowship requires not only that we shall be 
hospitable and ask others to our homes, but that 
we shall go out of our way to meet others in their 
homes, and wherever they may be. 

The deepest fellowship cannot be made to 
order. It comes of itself along lines of com- 
mon interests and common aims. — The harder 
we try to force people together, and to make them 
like each other, the farther they fly apart. Give 
them some interest or enthusiasm in common, 
whether it be practical, or scientific, or literary, or 
artistic, or musical, or religious, and this interest, 
which draws both toward itself at the same time 



lo6 FELLOW-MEN. 

draws them toward each other. Hence a person, 
who from bashfulness or any other reason is kept 
from intimate fellowship with others, will often find 
the best way to approach them, not to force 
himself into their companionship, against his will 
and probably against theirs ; but to acquire skill 
as a musician, or reader, or student of science or 
letters, or philanthrophy or social problems. Then 
along these lines of common interest he will meet 
men in ways that will be at once helpful and 
natural. 

THE VIRTUE. 

Love is not soft, sentimental self-indulgence. 
It is going out of ourselves, and taking others 
into our hearts and lives. — Love calls for hard 
service and severe self-sacrifice, when the needs of 
others make service possible and self-sacrifice neces- 
sary. Love binds us to others and others to our- 
selves in bonds of mutual fidelity and helpfulness. 
A Latin poet sums up the spirit of love in the 
famous line : 

Homo sum : humani nil a me alienum puto. 
[I am a man : and I count nothing human foreign to myself.] 

Kant has expressed the principle of love in the 
form of a maxim : " Treat humanity, whether in thy- 
self or in others, always as an end, never as a 
means." We have seen that the temptation to 
treat others merely as tools to minister to our grati- 
fication, or as obstacles to be pushed out of our 
pathway, is very strong. What makes us treat 



THE VIRTUE. 1 07 

people in that way is our failure to enter into their 
lives, to see things as they see them, and to feel 
things as they feel them. Kant tells us that we 
should always act with a view to the way others 
will be affected by it. We must treat men as men, 
not as things. This sympathy and appreciation for 
another is the first step in love. If we think of our 
neighbor as he thinks of himself we cannot help 
wishing him well. As Professor Royce says, " If he 
is real like thee, then is his life as bright a light, as 
warm a fire, to him, as thine to thee ; his will is as 
full of struggling desires, of hard problems, of fate- 
ful decisions; his pains are as hateful, his joys as 
dear. Take whatever thou knowest of desire and 
of striving, of burning love and of fierce hatred, 
realize as fully as thou canst what that means, and 
then with clear certainty add : Such as that is for 
me, so it is for him, nothing less. Then thou hast 
known what he truly is, a Self like thy present 
self." 

The Golden Rule, Do unto others as you would 
that they should do unto you, is the best summary 
of duty. And the keeping of that rule is possible 
only in so far as we love others. We must put our- 
selves in their place, before we can know how to 
treat them as we would like to be treated. And 
this putting self in the place of another is the very 
essence of love. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as 
thyself includes all social law. Love is the fulfill- 
ing of the law. 

Love takes different forms in different circum- 



io8 FELLOW-MEN. 

stances and in different relations. To the hungry 
love gives food ; to the thirsty drink ; to the naked 
clothes ; to the sick nursing ; to the ignorant in- 
struction ; to the blind guidance ; to the erring re- 
■proof; to the penitent forgiveness. Indeed, the so- 
cial virtues which will occupy the remainder of this 
book are simply applications of love in differing rela- 
tions : and toward different groups and institutions. 

THE REWARD. 

Love the only true bond of union between per- 
sons. — The desire to be in unity with our fellow- 
men is, as John Stuart Mill tells us, "already a 
powerful principle in human nature, and happily one 
of those which tend to become more strong, even 
without express inculcation, from the influences of 
advancing civilization. The deeply rooted concep- 
tion which every individual even now has of him- 
self as a social being, tends to make him feel it one 
of his natural wants that there should be harmony 
between his feelings and aims and those of his fel- 
low-creatures. " The life of love is in itself a constant 
realization of this deepest and strongest desire of 
our nature. Love is the essence of social and spirit- 
ual life ; and that life of unity with our fellow-men 
which love creates is in itself love's own reward. 
"Life is energy of love." Oneness with those we 
love is the only goal in which love could rest satis- 
fied. For love is " the greatest thing in the world," 
and any reward other than union with its object 
would be a loss rather than a gain. 



THE TEMPTATIO. i~9 



THE TEMPTAT1 



Kant remarks that a dove, realizing that the 
resistance of the air is the sole obstacle to its 
progress, might imagine that if it could only get 
away from the air altogether, it would fly with 
infinite rapidity and ease. — But in fact, if the air 
were withdrawn for am instant it would fall helpless 
to the ground. Friction is the >nly thing :he loco- 
motive has to overcome. And if the locomotive 
could reason it might think how fast it could travel 
if ::.>■ friction were removed. But without friction 
the locomotive could not stir ; s breadth from 

the station. 

In like manner, inasmuch as the greater part of our 
annoyances and trials and sufferings come from con- 
tact with our fellow-men, it often seems to us that 
if we could :..;- get away from them altogether, 
and live in utter indifference to them, our lives 
would move on with utmost smoothness and serenity. 
In fact, if these relations were withdrawn, if we could 
attain to perfect indifference to our fellows, our life 
as human and spiritual ':e:::^s would that instant 
cease. 

The temptation to treat :rr fellow-men with in- 
difference, like all temptations, is a delusion and 
leads to our destruction. Yet it is a very strong 
temptation to us all at times. When people do not 
appreciate us, and do not treat us with due kindness 
and consideration, it is so easy tc draw into our 
shell and say, M I don't care a straw for them or their 



1 1 FELL IV- MEN. 

good opinion anyway." This device is an old one. 
The Stoics made much of it ; and boasted of the 
completeness of their indifference. But it is essen- 
tially weak and cowardly. It avoids certain evils, to 
be sure. It does so, however, not by overcoming 
them in brave, manly fashion ; but by running and 
hiding away from them — an easy and a disgraceful 
thing to do. Intimate fellowship and close contact 
with others does bring pains as well as pleasures. It 
is the condition of completeness and fullness of moral 
and spiritual life; and the man who will live at his best 
must accept these pains with courage and resolution. 

THE VICE OF DEFECT. 

The outcome of indifference and lack of sym- 
pathy and fellowship is selfishness. — Unless we 
first feel another's interests as he feels them, we 
cannot help being more interested in our own affairs 
than we are in his, and consequently sacrificing his 
interests to our own when the two conflict. As 
George Eliot tells us in "Adam Bede," "Without 
this fellow-feeling, how are we to get enough patience 
and charity toward our stumbling, falling compan- 
ions in the long, changeful journey? And there is 
but one way in which a strong, determined soul can 
learn it, by getting his heart-strings bound round 
the weak and erring, so that he must share not only 
the outward consequence of their error, but their 
inward suffering. That is a long and hard lesson." 

It is impossible to overcome selfishness di- 
rectly. — As long as our poor, private interests 



THE VICE OF DEFECT. Ill 

are the only objects vividly present to our im- 
agination and feeling, we must be selfish. The only 
remedy is the indirect one of entering into fellow- 
ship with others, interesting ourselves in what inter- 
ests them, sharing their joys and sorrows, their 
hopes and fears. When we have done that, then 
there is something besides our petty and narrow 
personal interests before our minds and thoughts ; 
and so we are in a way to get something besides 
mean and selfish actions from our wills and hands. 
We act out what is in us. If there is nothing but 
ourselves present to our thoughts, we shall be sel- 
fish of necessity ; and without even knowing that we 
are selfish. If our thoughts and feelings are full of 
the welfare and interests of others we shall do lov- 
ing and unselfish deeds, without ever stopping to 
think that they are loving and unselfish. Hence 
the precept, " Keep thy heart with all diligence, for 
out of it are the issues of life." A heart and mind 
full of sympathy and fellow-feeling is the secret of 
a loving life ; and an idle mind and an empty heart, 
to which no thrill of sympathy with others is ever 
admitted, is the barren and desolate region from 
which loveless looks and cruel words and selfish 
deeds come forth. 

Love is not a virtue which we can cultivate in 
ourselves by direct effort of will, and then take 
credit for afterward. — Love comes to us of itself ; 
it springs up spontaneously within our breasts. We 
can prepare our hearts for its entrance ; we can wel- 
come and cherish it when it comes. We cannot 



112 FELLOW-MEN. 

boast of it, for we could not help it. Love is the 
welling up within us of our true social nature; 
which nothing but our indifference and lack of 
sympathy could have kept so long repressed. 
" Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth 
not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own." 
Love " seeketh not its own " because it has no own 
to seek. 

Selfishness on the contrary knows all about 
itself; has a good opinion of itself; never gets 
its own interests mixed up with those of anybody 
else ; can always give a perfectly satisfactory 
account of itself. 

Hence when we know exactly how we came to do 
a thing, and appreciate keenly how good it was of 
us to do it ; and think how very much obliged the 
other person ought to be to us for doing it, we may 
be pretty sure that it was not love, but some more 
or less subtle form of selfishness that prompted it. 
Love and selfishness may do precisely the same 
things. Under the influence of either love or sel- 
fishness I may " bestow all my goods to feed the 
poor and give my body to be burned," but love 
alone profiteth ; while all the subtle forms of selfish- 
ness and self-seeking are " sounding brass and 
clanging cymbal." Selfishness, even when it does a 
service, has its eye on its own merit, or the reward 
it is to gain. In so doing it forfeits merit and 
reward both. Selfishness never succeeds in getting 
outside of itself. From all the joys and graces of 
the social life it remains in perpetual banishment. 



THE VICE OF EXCESS. 113 

Love loses itself in the object loved, and so finds a 
larger and better self. Selfishness tries to use the 
object of its so-called love as a means to its own 
gratification, and so remains to the end in loveless 
isolation. Many manifestations of selfishness look 
very much like love. To know the real difference 
is the most fundamental moral insight. On it de- 
pend the issues of life and death. 

THE VICE OF EXCESS. 

The most flagrant mockery of love is senti- 
mentality. — The sentimentalist is on hand where- 
ever there is a chance either to mourn or to rejoice. 
He is never so happy as when he is pouring forth a 
gush of feeling; and it matters little whether it be 
laughter or tears, sorrow or joy, to which he is per- 
mitted to give vent. On the surface he seems to be 
overflowing with the milk of human kindness. He 
strikes us at first sight as the very incarnation of 
tenderness and love. 

And yet we soon discover that he cares nothing 
for us, or for our joys and sorrows in themselves. 
Anybody else, or any other occasion, would serve 
his purpose as well, and call forth an equal copious- 
ness of sympathy and tears. Indeed a first rate novel, 
with its suffering heroine, or a good play with its 
pathetic scenes, would answer his purpose quite as 
well as any living person or actual situation. What 
he cares for is the thrill of emotional excitement 
and the ravishing sensation which accompanies all 
deep and tender feeling. Not love, but love's de- 



114 FELLOW-MEN. 

lights ; not sympathy, but the rapture of the sym- 
pathetic mood ; not helpfulness, but the sense of 
self-importance which comes from being around 
when great trials are to be met and fateful decisions 
are to be made; not devotion to others, but the 
complacency with self which intimate connection 
with others gives: these are the objects at which 
the sentimentalist really aims. 

The sentimentalist makes himself a nuisance 
to others and soon becomes disgusted with him- 
self. — He cannot be relied upon for any serious 
service, for this gush of sentimental feeling is a trans- 
ient and fluctuating thing ; it gives out just as soon 
as it meets with difficulty and occasion for self-sacri- 
fice. And this attempt to live forever on the top- 
most wave of emotional excitement defeats itself 
by the satiety and ennui which it brings. Whether 
in courtship, or society, or business, it behooves 
us to be on our guard against this insidious sham 
which cloaks selfishness in protestations of af- 
fection ; pays compliments to show off its own 
ability to say pretty things ; and undertakes respon- 
sibilities to make the impression of being of some 
consequence in the world. The man or woman 
is extremely fortunate who has never fallen a 
victim to this hollow mockery of love, either in 
self or others. The worst effect of sentimentality is 
that when we have detected it a few times, eitherin 
ourselves or in others, we are tempted to conclude 
that fellowship itself is a farce, love a delusion, and 
all sympathy and tenderness a weakness and a sham. 



THE PENALTY. 115 

Every good thing has its counterfeit. By all means 
let this counterfeit be driven from circulation as fast 
as possible. But let us not lose faith in human fellow- 
ship and human love because this base imitation is 
so hollow and disgusting: 

For life, with all it yields of joy and woe, 
And hope and fear, — believe the aged friend, — 
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love, 
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is ; 
And that we hold thenceforth to the uttermost 
Such prize despite the envy of the world, 
And having gained truth, keep truth, that is all. 

THE PENALTY. 

The penalty of selfishness is strife.— The selfish 
man can neither leave men entirely alone, nor can he 
live at peace and in unity with them. Hence come 
strife and division. Being unwilling to make the 
interests of others his own, the selfish man's interests 
must clash with the interests of others. His hand is 
against every man ; and every man's hand, unless it is 
stayed by generosity and pity, is against him. This 
clashing of outside interests is reflected in his own con- 
sciousness ; and the war of his generous impulses 
with his selfish instincts makes his own breast a per- 
petual battlefield. The lack of harmony with his 
fellows in the outward world makes peace within his 
own soul impossible. The selfish man, by cutting 
himself off from his true relations with his fellow-men, 
cuts up the roots of the only principles which could 
give to his own life dignity and harmony and peace. 



n6 FELLOW-MEN. 

Selfishness defeats itself. By refusing to go out of 
self into the lives of others, the selfish man renders 
it impossible for the great life of human sympathy 
and fellowship and love to enter his own life, and fill 
it with its own largeness and sweetness and serenity. 
The selfish man remains to the last an alien, an out- 
cast and an enemy, banished from all that is best in 
the life of his fellows by the insuperable obstacle of 
his own unwillingness to be one with them in mutual 
helpfulness and service. 



CHAPTER XV. 

XTbe poot\ 

Our fellow-men are so numerous and their con- 
ditions are so diverse that it is necessary to consider 
some of the classes and conditions of men by them- 
selves ; and to study some of the special forms which 
fellowship and love assume under these differing 
circumstances. 

Of these classes or divisions in which we may 
group our fellow-men, the one having the first claim 
upon us by virtue of its greater need is the poor. 
The causes of poverty are accident, sickness, in- 
ability to secure work, laziness, improvidence, in- 
temperance, ignorance, and shiftlessness. Those 
whose poverty is due to the first three causes are 
commonly called the worthy poor. 

THE DUTY. 

Whether worthy or unworthy, the poor are 
our brothers and sisters ; and on the ground of 
our common humanity we owe them our help 
and sympathy. — It is easier to sympathize with the 
worthy than with the unworthy poor. Yet the poor 
who are poor as the result of their own fault are 
really the more in need of our pity and help. The 
work of lifting them up to the level of self-respect 

ii 7 



n8 THE POOR. 

and self-support is much harder than the mere giv- 
ing them material relief. Yet nothing less than 
this is our duty. The mere tossing of pennies to 
the tramp and the beggar is not by any means the 
fulfillment of their claim upon us. Indeed, such in- 
discriminate giving does more harm than good. It 
increases rather than relieves pauperism. So that 
the first duty of charity is to refuse to give in this 
indiscriminate way. Either we must give more than 
food and clothes and money ; or else we must give 
nothing at all. Indiscriminate giving merely adds 
fuel to the flame. 

THE VIRTUE. 

The special form which love takes when its 
object is the poor is called benevolence or 
charity. — True benevolence, like love, of which it is 
a special application, makes the well-being of its 
object its own. In what then does the well-being 
of the poor consist ? Is it bread and beef, a coat on 
the back, a roof over the head, and a bed to sleep 
in ? These are conditions of well-being, but not the 
whole of it. A man cannot be well off without these 
things. But it is by no means sure that he will be 
well off with them. 

What a man thinks; how he feels; what he loves; 
what he hopes for ; what he is trying to do ; what he 
means to be ; — these are quite as essential elements in 
his well-being as what he has to eat and wear. True 
benevolence therefore must include these things in 
its efforts. Benevolence must aim to improve the 



THE VIRTUE. 1 19 

man together with his condition or its gifts will be 
worse than wasted. 

There are three principles which all wise benevol- 
ence must observe. 

First : Know all that can be known about the 
man you help. — Unless we are willing to find out 
all we can about a poor man, we have no business 
to indulge our sympathy or ease our conscience by 
giving him money or food. It is often easier to 
give than to withhold. But it is far more harmful. 
When Bishop Potter says that " It is far better, — 
better for him and better for us, — to give a beggar 
a kick than to give him a half-dollar/' it sounds 
like a hard saying, yet it is the strict truth. In a 
civilized and Christian community any really de- 
serving person can secure assistance through per- 
sons or agencies that either know about his needs, 
or will take the trouble to look them up. When a 
stranger begs from strangers he thereby confesses 
that he prefers to present his claims where their 
merits are unknown ; and the act proclaims him as a 
fraud. To the beggar, to ourselves, and to the really 
deserving poor, we owe a prompt and stern refusal 
of all uninvestigated appeals for charity. "True 
charity never opens the heart without at the same 
time opening the mind. ,, 

The second principle is : Let the man you help 
know as much as he can of you. — Bureaus and 
societies are indispensable aids to effective benevol- 
ence ; without their aid thorough knowledge of 
the needs and merits of the poor would be impossi- 



120 THE POOR. 

ble. Their function, however, should be to direct 
and superintend, not to dispense with and supplant 
direct personal contact between giver and receiver. 
The recipient of aid should know the one who helps 
him as man or woman, not as secretary or agent. If 
all the money, food, and clothing necessary to relieve 
the wants of the poor could be deposited at their fire- 
sides regularly each Christmas by Santa Claus, such 
a Christmas present, with the regular expectation of 
its repetition each year, would do these poor families 
more harm than good. It might make them tem- 
porarily more comfortable ; it would make them 
permanently less industrious, thrifty, and self-reliant. 

Investigations have proved conclusively that half 
the persons who are in want in our cities need no 
help at all, except help in finding work. One-sixth 
are unworthy of any material assistance whatever, 
since they would spend it immediately on their 
vices. One-fifth need only temporary help and en- 
couragement to get over hard places. Only about 
one-tenth need permanent assistance. 

On the other hand all need cheer, comfort, advice, 
sympathy, and encouragement, or else reproof, warn- 
ing, and restraint. They all need kind, firm, wise, 
judicious friends. The less professionalism, the 
more personal sympathy and friendliness there is in 
our benevolence, the better it will be. In the words 
of Octavia Hill : " It is the families, the homes of the 
poor that need to be influenced. Is not she most 
sympathetic, most powerful, who nursed her own 
mother through her long illness, and knew how to 



THE VIRTUE. 121 

go quietly through the darkened room : who entered 
so heartily into her sister's marriage : who obeyed 
so heartily her father's command when it was hard- 
est ? Better still if she be wife and mother herself 
and can enter into the responsibilities of a head of 
a household, understands her joys and cares, knows 
what heroic patience it needs to keep gentle when 
the nerves are unhinged and the children noisy. 
Depend upon it if we thought of the poor primarily 
as husbands, wives, sons, daughters, members of 
households as we are ourselves, instead of contem- 
plating them as a different class, we should recog- 
nize better how the home training and the high 
ideal of home duty was our best preparation for 
work among them. ,, 

The third principle is : Give the man you help 
no more and no less than he needs to make his 
life what you and he together see that it is good 
for it to be. — This principle shows how much to 
give. Will ten cents serve as an excuse for idle- 
ness ? Will five cents be spent in drink? Will one 
cent relax his determination to earn an honest living 
for himself and family ? Then these sums are too 
much, and should be withheld. On the other hand, 
can the man be made hopeful, resolute, determined 
to overcome the difficulties of a trying situation ? 
Can you impart to him your own strong will, your 
steadfast courage, your high ideal ? is he ready to 
work, and willing to make any sacrifice that is nec- 
essary to regain the power of self-support ? Then 
you will not count any sum that you can afford to 



122 THE POOR. 

give too great ; even if it be necessary to carry him 
and his family right through a winter by sheer 
force of giving outright everything they need. 

It is not the amount of the gift, but the spirit in 
which it is received that makes it good or bad for 
the recipient. If received by a man who clings to all 
the weakness and wickedness that brought his poverty 
upon him, then your gift, whether small or large, does 
no good and much harm. If with the gift the man 
welcomes your counsel, follows your advice, adopts 
your ideal, and becomes partaker in your determina- 
tion that he shall become as industrious, and prudent, 
and courageous as a man in his situation can be, 
then whether you give him little or much material 
assistance, every cent of it goes to the highest work 
in which wealth can be employed — the making a 
man more manlike. 

THE REWARD, 

Our attitude toward the poor and unfortunate 
is the test of our attitude toward humanity. — 

For the poor and unfortunate present humanity to 
us in the condition which most strongly appeals to 
our fellow-feeling. The way in which I treat this 
poor man who happens to cross my path, is the way 
I should treat my dearest friend, if he were equally 
poor and unfortunate, and equally remote from per- 
sonal association with my past life. The man who 
will let a single poor family suffer, when he is able 
to afford relief, is capable of being false to the whole 
human race. Speaking in the name of our common 



THE TEMPTATION. 123 

humanity, the Son of Man declares, " Inasmuch as 
ye have done it unto one of the least of these my 
brethren, ye have done it unto me." Sympathy 
" doubles our joys and halves our sorrows." It in- 
creases our range of interest and affection, making 
"the world one fair moral whole " in which we share 
the joys and sorrows of our brothers. 

The man who sympathizes with the sufferings 
of others seeks and finds the sympathy of others 
in his own losses and trials when they come. — 
Familiarity and sympathy with the sufferings of 
others strengthens us to bear suffering when it comes 
to us: for we are able to see that it is no unusual 
and exceptional evil falling upon us alone, but accept 
it as an old and familiar acquaintance, whom we 
have so often met in other lives that we do not 
fear his presence in our own. 

THE TEMPTATION. 

"Am I my brother's keeper?" — We are com- 
fortable and well cared for. We are earning our 
own living. We pay our debts. We work hard for 
what we get. Why should we not enjoy ourselves? 
Why should I share my earnings with the shiftless 
vagabond, the good-for-nothing loafer? What is he 
to me? In one or another of these forms the mur- 
derous question "Am I my brother's keeper?" is 
sure to rise to our lips when the needs of the poor 
call for our assistance and relief. Or if we do recog- 
nize the claim, we are tempted to hide behind some 
organization ; giving our money to that; and send- 



124 THE POOR. 

ing it to do the actual work. We do not like to come 
into the real presence of suffering and want. We 
do not want to visit the poor man in his tenement ; 
and clasp his hand, and listen with our own ears to 
the tale of wretchedness and woe as it falls directly 
from his lips. We do not care to take the heavy 
and oppressive burden of his life's problem upon 
our own minds and hearts. We wish him well. 
But we do not will his betterment strongly and 
earnestly enough to take us to his side, and join 
our hands with his in lifting off the weight that 
keeps him down. Alienation, the desire to hold 
ourselves aloof from the real wretchedness of our 
brother, is our great temptation with reference to 
the poor. 

THE VICE OF DEFECT. 

The reluctant doling out of insufficient aid to 
the poor is niggardliness. — The niggard is think- 
ing all the time of himself, and how he hates to 
part with what belongs to him. He gives as little 
as he can ; and that little hurts him terribly. This 
vice cannot be overcome directly. It is a phase of 
selfishness ; and like all forms of selfishness it can 
be cured only by getting out of self into another's 
life. By going among the poor, studying their 
needs, realizing their sufferings, we may be drawn 
out of our niggardliness and find a pleasure in giv- 
ing which we could never have cultivated by direct 
efforts of will. We cannot make ourselves benevo- 
lent by making up our minds that we will be 



THE VICE OF EXCESS. 125 

benevolent. Like all forms of love, benevolence can- 
not be forced ; but it will come of itself if we give 
its appropriate objects a large share of our thoughts 
and a warm place in our hearts. 

THE VICE OF EXCESS. 

Regard for others as they happen to be, instead 
of regard for what they are capable of becoming, 
leads to soft hearted and mischievous indulgence. 

— The indulgent giver sees the fact of suffering and 
rushes to its relief, without stopping to inquire in- 
to the cause of the poverty and the best measures 
of relief. Indulgence fails to see the ideal of what 
the poor man is to become. Indulgence does not 
look beyond the immediate fact of poverty ; and 
consequently the indulgent giver does nothing to 
lift the poor man out of it. Help in poverty, 
rather than help out of poverty, is what indulgent 
giving amounts to. The indulgent and indiscrimi- 
nate giver becomes a partner in the production of 
poverty. This indulgent giving is a phase of senti- 
mentality ; and the relief of one's own feelings, 
rather than the real good of a fellow-man is at the 
root of all such mischievous almsgiving. It is the 
form of benevolence without the substance. It 
does too much for the poor man just because it 
loves him too little. Indulgence measures benefac- 
tions, not by the needs and capacities of the re- 
ceiver, but by the sensibilities and emotions of the 
giver. What wonder that it always goes astray, 
and does harm under the guise of doing good ! 



126 THE POOR. 

THE PENALTY. 

Uncharitable treatment of the poor makes us 
alien to humanity, and distrustful of human 
nature. — We feel that they have a claim upon us 
that we have not fulfilled ; and we try to push them 
off beyond the range of our sympathy. They are 
not slow to take the hint. They interpret our harsh 
tones and our cold looks, and they look to us for 
help no more. But in pushing these poor ones 
beyond our reach, we unconsciously acquire hard, 
unsympathetic ways of thinking, feeling, speak- 
ing and acting, which others not so poor, others 
whom we would gladly have near us, also interpret ; 
and they too come to understand that there is no 
real kindness and helpfulness to be had from us in 
time of real need, and they keep their inmost selves 
apart, and suffer us to touch them only on the sur- 
face of their lives. When trouble comes to us we 
instinctively feel that we have no claim on the sym- 
pathy of others ; and so we have to bear our griefs 
alone. Having never suffered with others, sorrow is 
a stranger to us, and we think we are the most miser- 
able creatures in the world. 

Humanity is one. Action and reaction are equal. 
Our treatment of the poorest of our fellows is 
potentially our treatment of them all. And by a 
subtle law of compensation, which runs deeper than 
our own consciousness, what our attitude is toward 
our fellows determines their attitude toward us. 
" Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of 
these my brethren," says the Representative of our 
common humanity, " ye did it not unto me." 



CHAPTER XVI. 

Another class of our fellow-men whom it is 
especially hard to love are those who willfully do 
wrong. The men who cheat us, and say hateful 
things to us ; the men who abuse their wives and 
neglect their families ; the men who grind the faces 
of the poor, and contrive to live in ease and luxury 
on the earnings of the widow and the orphan ; the 
men who pervert justice and corrupt legislation in 
order to make money ; these and all wrongdoers ex- 
asperate us, and rouse our righteous indignation. Yet 
they are our fellow-men. We meet them everywhere. 
We suffer for their misdeeds; — and, what is worse, 
we have to see others, weaker and more helpless than 
ourselves, maltreated, plundered, and beaten by these 
wretches and villains. Wrongdoing is a great, hard, 
terrible fact. We must face it. We must have 
some clear and consistent principles of action with 
reference to these wrongdoers ; or else our wrath 
and indignation will betray us into the futile attempt 
to right one wrong by another wrong; and so drag 
us down to the level of the wrongdoers against 
whom we contend. 

127 



128 WRONGDOERS. 



THE DUTY. 



The first thing we owe to the wrongdoer is 
to give him his just deserts. Wrongdoing 
always hurts somebody. Justice demands that 
it shall hurt the wrongdoer himself.— The boy 

who tells a lie treats us as if we did not belong to 
the same society, and have the same claim on truth 
that he has. We must make him feel that we do 
not consider him fit to be on a level with us. We 
must make him ashamed of himself. The man who 
cheats us shows that he is willing to sacrifice our in- 
terests to his. We must show him that we will have 
no dealings with such a person. The man who is 
mean and stingy shows that he cares nothing for us. 
We must show him that we despise his miserliness 
and meanness. The robber and the murderer show 
that they are enemies to society. Society must 
exclude them from its privileges. 

It is the function of punishment to bring the 
offender to a realizing sense of the nature of his 
deed, by making him suffer the natural conse- 
quences of it, or an equivalent amount of pri- 
vation, in his own person. Punishment is a favor 
to the wrongdoer, just as bitter medicine is a favor 
to the sick. For without it, he would not appreciate 
the evil of his wrongdoing with sufficient force 
to repent of it, and abandon it. Plato teaches the 
true value of punishment in the " Gorgias." " The 
doing of wrong is the greatest of evils. To suffer 
punishment is the way to be released from this evil. 



THE DUTY. 129 

Not to suffer is to perpetuate the evil. To do 
wrong, then, is second only in the scale of evils ; 
but to do wrong and not to be punished, is first and 
greatest of all. He who has done wrong and has 
not been punished, is and ought to be the most 
miserable of all men ; the doer of wrong is more 
miserable than the sufferer ; and he who escapes 
punishment more miserable than he who suffers 
punishment. " 

Punishment is the best thing we can do for 
one who has done wrong. — Punishment is not a 
good in itself. But it is good relatively to the 
wrongdoer. It is the only way out of wrong into 
right. Punishment need not be brutal or degrad- 
ing. The most effectual punishment is often purely 
mental ; consisting in the sense of shame and sorrow 
which the offender is made to feel. In some form 
or other every wrongdoer should be made to feel 
painfully the wrongness of his deed. To " spare the 
rod," both literally and metaphorically, is to " spoil 
the child." The duty of inflicting punishment, like 
all duty, is often hard and unwelcome. But we 
become partakers in every wrong which we suffer 
to go unpunished and unrebuked when punishment 
and rebuke are within our power. 

THE VIRTUE. 

Forgiveness is not inconsistent with justice. 
It does not do away with punishment. It spirit- 
ualizes punishment ; substituting mental for 
bodily pains. — The sense of the evil and shame of 



130 WRONGDOERS. 

wrongdoing, which is the essence and end of pun- 
ishment, forgiveness, when it is appreciated, serves 
to intensify. Indeed it is impossible to inflict 
punishment rightly until you have first forgiven 
the offender. For punishment should be inflicted 
for the offender's good. And not until vengeance 
has given way to forgiveness are we able to care 
for the offender's well-being. 

Forgiveness is a special form of love. It recog- 
nizes the humanity of the offender, and treats him 
as a brother, even when his deeds are most un- 
brotherly. But it cares so much for him that it will 
not shrink from inflicting whatever merciful pains 
may be necessary to deliver him from his own un- 
brotherliness. Forgiveness loves not the offense but 
the man. It hates the offense chiefly because it in- 
jures the man. Its punishment of the offense is the 
negative side of its positive devotion to the person. 
The command " love your enemies" is not a hard 
impossibility on the one hand, nor a soft piece of 
sentimentalism on the other. It is possible, because 
there is a human, loveable side, even to the worst 
villain, if we can only bring ourselves to think on 
that better side, and the possibilities which it in- 
volves. It is practical, because regard for that bet- 
ter side of his nature demands that we shall make 
him as miserable in his wrongdoing as is neces- 
sary to lead him to abandon his wrongdoing, and 
give the better possibilities of his nature a chance to 
develop. The parent who punishes the naughty 
child loves him not less but more than the parent 



THE REWARD. 13 l 

who withholds the needed punishment. The state 
which suffers crime to go unpunished becomes a 
nursery of criminals. It wrongs itself; it wrongs 
honest citizens; but most of all it wrongs the crimi- 
nals themselves whom it encourages in crime by un- 
due lenity. The object of forgiveness is not to take 
away punishment, but to make whatever punishment 
remains effective for the reformation of the offender. 
It is to transfer the seat of suffering from the body, 
where its effect is uncertain and indirect, to the mind, 
where sorrow for wrongdoing is powerful and effi- 
cacious. Every wrong act brings its penalty with it. 
In order to induce repentance and reformation that 
penalty must in some way be brought home to the 
one who did the wrong. Vengeance drives the 
penalty straight home, refusing to bear any part of 
it itself. Forgiveness first takes the penalty upon 
itself in sorrow for the wrong, and then invites the 
wrongdoer to share the sorrow which he who for- 
gives him has already borne. Vengeance smites the 
body, and often drives in deeper the perversity. 
Forgiveness touches the heart and gently but firmly 
draws the heart's affections away from the wrong, 
into devotion to the right. 

THE REWARD. 

Forgiveness, rightly received, works the ref- 
ormation of the offender. — And to one who ardently 
loves righteousness there is no joy comparable to that 
of seeing a man who has been doing" wrong, turn from 
it, renounce it, and determine that henceforth he will 



13 2 WRONGDOERS. 

endeavor to do right. Contrast heightens our emo- 
tions. And there is " joy over one sinner that re- 
penteth, more than over ninety and nine righteous 
persons that need no repentance." Deliverance from 
wrong is effected by the firm yet kindly presentation 
of the right as something still possible for us, and into 
which a friend stands ready to welcome us. Refor- 
mation is wrought by that blending of justice and 
forgiveness which at the same time holds the wrong 
abhorrent and the wrongdoer dear. Reformation 
is the end at which forgiveness aims, and its ac- 
complishment is its own reward. 

THE TEMPTATION. 

The sight of heinous offenses and outrageous 
deeds against ourselves or others tempts us to 
wreak our vengeance upon the offender. — This 
impulse of revenge served a useful purpose in the 
primitive condition of human society. It still 
serves as the active support of righteous indignation. 
But it is blind and rough ; and is not suited to the 
conditions of civilized life. Vengeance has no con- 
sideration for the true well-being of the offender. 
It confounds the person with the deed in wholesale 
condemnation. It renders evil for evil ; it provokes 
still further retaliation ; and erects a single fault 
into the occasion of a lasting feud. It is irra- 
tional, brutal, and inhuman ; it is dangerous and de- 
grading. 



THE VICE OF DEFECT. 133 

THE VICE OF DEFECT. 

The absence of forgiveness in dealing with 
wrongdoers leads to undue severity.— The end 
of punishment being to bring the offender to realize 
the evil of his deed and to repent of it, punishment 
should not be carried beyond the point which is 
necessary to produce that result. To continue 
punishment after genuine penitence is manifested is 
to commit a fresh wrong ourselves. " If thy brother 
sin, rebuke him ; and if he repent, forgive him. And 
if he sin against thee seven times in a day, and 
seven times turn again to thee, saying, I repent, thou 
shalt forgive him." To ignore an unrepented wrong, 
and to continue to punish a repented wrong, are 
equally wide of the mark of that love for the offender 
which meets out to him both justice and forgiveness 
according to his needs. All punishment which is not 
tempered with forgiveness is brutal ; and brutalizes 
both punisher and punished. It hardens the heart of 
the offender ; and itself constitutes a new offense 
against him. 

These principles apply strictly to relations between 
individuals. In the case of punishment by the state, 
the necessity of self-protection ; of warning others; 
and of approximate uniformity in procedure; added 
to the impossibility of getting at the exact state of 
mind of the offender by legal processes, render it 
necessary to inflict penalties in many cases which 
are more severe than the best interest of the individ- 
ual offenders requires. To meet such cases, and to 



134 WRONGDOERS. 

mitigate the undue severity of uniform penalties 
when they fall too heavily on individuals, all 
civilized nations give the power of pardon to the 
executive. 

Whether the penalty be in itself light or severe, 
it should always be administered in the endeavor 
to improve and reform the character of the of- 
fender. — The period of confinement in jail or prison 
should be made a period of real privation and suffer- 
ing; but it should be especially the privation of op- 
portunity for indulgence in idleness and vice; and 
the painfuiness of discipline in acquiring the knowl- 
edge and skill necessary to make the convict a self- 
respecting and self-supporting member of society, 
after his term of sentence expires. 

THE VICE OF EXCESS. 

Lenity ignores the wrong ; and by ignoring it, 
becomes responsible for its repetition. — Lenity is 
sentimentality bestowed oncriminals. It treats them 
in the manner most congenial to its own feelings, 
instead of in the way most conducive to their good. 
Forgiveness is regard for the offender in view of his 
ability to renounce the offense and try to do 
better in the future. Lenity confounds offender 
and offense in a wholesale and promiscuous am- 
nesty. The true attitude toward the wrongdoer 
must preserve the balance set forth by the lawgiver 
of Israel as characteristic of Israel's God, "full of 
compassion and gracious, slow to anger and plente- 



THE PENALTY. 1 35 

ous in mercy and truth ; keeping mercy for thou- 
sands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin : 
and that will by no means clear the guilty." Lenity 
which " clears the guilty " is neither mercy, nor 
graciousness, nor compassion, nor forgiveness. Such 
lenity obliterates moral distinctions ; disintegrates 
society; corrupts and weakens the moral nature 
of the one who indulges in it ; and confirms in per- 
versity him on whom it is bestowed. 

THE PENALTY. 

Severity and lenity alike increase the perver- 
sity of the offender. — Severity drives the offender 
into fresh determination to do wrong ; and intrenches 
him behind the conception that he has been treated 
unfairly. He is made to think that all the world is 
against him, and he sees no reason why he should not 
set himself against the world. Lenity leads him to 
think the world is on his side no matter what he 
does; and so he asks himself why he should take 
the trouble to mend his ways. Lenity to others 
leads us to be lenient toward ourselves ; and we 
commit wrong in expectation of that lenient treat- 
ment which we are in the habit of according to 
others. Severity to others makes us ashamed to ask 
for mercy when we need it for ourselves. Further- 
more, knowing there is no mercy in ourselves, we 
naturally infer that there is none in others. We 
disbelieve in forgiveness ; and our disbelief hides 
from our eyes the forgiveness, which, if we had 



*3 6 WRONGDOERS, 

more faith in its presence, we might find. Hence 
the unforgiving man can find no forgiveness for 
himself in time of need ; he sinks to that level of 
despair and confirmed perversity, to which his own 
unrelenting spirit has doomed so many of his erring 
brothers. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

tfvienbs. 

In addition to that bond of a common humanity 
which ought to bind us to all our fellow-men, there 
is a tie of special affinity between persons of con- 
genial tastes, kindred pursuits, common interests, 
and mutually cherished ideals. Persons to whom 
we are drawn, and who are likewise drawn to us, by 
these cords of subtle sympathy we call our friends. 

Friendship is regard for what our friend is ; not 
for what he can do for us. " The perfect friend- 
ship," says Aristotle, " is that of good men who 
resemble one another in virtue. For they both 
alike wish well to one another as good men, and it 
is their essential character to be good men. And 
those who wish well to their friends for the friends' 
sake are friends in the truest sense ; for they have 
these sentiments toward each other as being what 
they are, and not in an accidental way ; their friend- 
ship, therefore, lasts as long as their virtue, and that 
is a lasting thing. Such friendships are uncommon, 
for such people are rare. Such friendship requires 
long and familiar intercourse. For they cannot be 
friends till each show and approve himself to the 
other as worthy to be loved. A wish to be friends 
may be of rapid growth, but not friendship. Those 

137 



138 FRIEXDS. 

whose love for one another is based on the useful, do 
not love each other for what they are, but only in so 
far as each gets some good from the other. These 
friendships are accidental ; for the object of affection 
is loved, not as being the person or character that he 
is, but as the source of some good or some pleasure. 
Friendships of this kind are easily dissolved, as the 
persons do not continue unchanged ; for if they 
cease to be useful or pleasant to one another, their 
love ceases. On the disappearance of that which 
was the motive of their friendship, their friendship 
itself is dissolved, since it existed solely with a 
view to that. For pleasure then or profit it is 
possible even for bad men to be friends with one 
another; but it is evident that the friendship in 
which each loves the other for himself is only pos- 
sible between good men ; for bad men take no 
delight in each other unless some advantage is to 
be gained. The friendship whose motive is utility is 
the friendship of sordid souls. Friendship lies more 
in loving than in being loved ; so that when people 
love each other in proportion to their worth, they 
are lasting friends, and theirs is lasting friendship. " 

THE DUTY. 

The interest of our friend should be our inter- 
est ; his welfare, our welfare ; his wish, our will ; 
his good, our aim. — If he prospers we rejoice; if 
he is overtaken by adversity, we must stand by him. 
If he is in want, we must share our goods with him. 
If he is unpopular, we must stand up for him. If he 



THE VIRTUE. 139 

does wrong, we must be the first to tell him of his 
fault : and the first to bear with him the penalty of 
his offense. If he is unjustly accused we must be- 
lieve in his innocence to the last. Friends must 
have all things in common; not in the sense of legal 
ownership, which would be impracticable, and, as 
Epicurus pointed out, would imply mutual distrust ; 
but in the sense of a willingness on the part of each 
to do for the other all that is in his power. Only on 
the high plane of such absolute, whole-souled devo- 
tion can pure friendship be maintained. 

THE VIRTUE. 

The true friend is one we can rely upon.— 

Our deepest secrets, our tenderest feelings, our 
frankest confessions, our inmost aspirations, our 
most cherished plans, our most sacred ideals are as 
safe in his keeping as in our own. Yes, they are 
safer; for the faithful friend will not hesitate to 
prick the bubbles of our conceit ; laugh us out of 
our sentimentality ; expose the root of selfishness 
beneath our virtuous pretensions. " Faithful are the 
wounds of a friend. " To be sure the friend must 
do all this with due delicacy and tact. If he takes 
advantage of his position to exercise his censorious- 
ness upon us we speedily vote him a bore, and take 
measures to get rid of him. But when done with 
gentleness and good nature, and with an eye single 
to our real good, this pruning of the tendrils of our 
inner life is one of the most precious offices of 
friendship. 



14° FRIENDS. 



THE REWARD. 



The chief blessing of friendship is the sense 
that we are not living our lives and fighting 
our battles alone ; but that our lives are linked 
with the lives of others, and that the joys and 
sorrows of our united lives are felt by hearts 
that beat as one. — The seer who laid down so se- 
verely the stern conditions which the highest friend- 
ship must fulfill, has also sung its praises so sweetly, 
that his poem at the beginning of his essay may 
serve as our description of the blessings which it is 
in the power of friendship to confer: 

A ruddy drop of manly blood 

The surging sea outweighs ; 

The world uncertain comes and goes, 

The lover rooted stays. 

I fancied he was fled, 

And, after many a year, 

Glowed unexhausted kindliness 

Like daily sunrise there. 

My careful heart was free again, — 

Oh, friend, my bosom said, 

Through thee alone the sky is arched, 

Through thee the rose is red, 

All things through thee take nobler form 

And look beyond the earth, ■ 

The mill-round of our fate appears 

A sun-path in thy worth. 

Me too thy nobleness has taught 

To master my despair ; 

The fountains of my hidden life 

Are through thy friendship fair, 



THE TEMPTATION. 141 

THE TEMPTATION. 

A relation so intimate as that of friendship 
offers constant opportunity for betrayal. — 

Friends understand each other perfectly. Friend 
utters to friend many things which he would not for 
all the world let others know. And more than that, 
the intimate association of friendship cannot fail to 
give the friend an opportunity to perceive the deep 
secrets of the other's heart which he would not speak 
even to a friend, and which he has scarcely dared to 
acknowledge even to himself. 

This intimate knowledge of another appeals 
strangely to our vanity and pride ; and we are often 
tempted to show it off by disclosing some of these 
secrets which have been revealed to us in the confi- 
dence of friendship. This is the meanest thing one 
person can do to another. The person who yields 
to this basest of temptations is utterly unworthy 
ever again to have a friend. Betrayal of friends is 
the unpardonable social sin. 

THE VICE OF DEFECT. 

We cannot find people who in every respect 
are exactly to our liking. —And, what is more to 
the point, we never can make ourselves exactly 
what we should like to have other people intimately 
know and understand. Friendship calls for courage 
enough to show ourselves in spite of our frailties 
and imperfections ; and to take others in spite of the 
possible shortcomings which close acquaintance may 
reveal in them. Friendship requires a readiness 



H2 FRIENDS. 

to give and take, for better or for worse; and that 
exclusiveness which shrinks from the risks involved 
is simply a combination of selfishness and cowardice. 
Refusal to make friends is a sure sign that a man 
either is ashamed of himself, or else lacks faith 
in his fellow-men. And these two states of mind are 
not so different as they might at first appear. For 
we judge others chiefly by ourselves. And the man 
who distrusts his fellow-men, generally bases his dis- 
trust of them on the consciousness that he himself 
is not worthy of the trust of others. So that the real 
root of exclusiveness is the dread of letting other 
people get near to us, for fear of what they might 
discover. Exclusiveness puts on the airs of pride. 
But pride is only a game of bluff, by which a man 
who is ashamed to have other people get near enough 
to see him as he is pretends that he is terribly afraid 
of getting near enough to others to see what they 

are. 

THE VICE OF EXCESS. 

Effusiveness. — Some people can keep nothing to 
themselves. As soon as they get an experience, or 
feel an emotion, or have an ache or pain, they must 
straightway run and. pour it intothe ear of some sym- 
pathetic listener. The result is that experiences 
do not gain sufficient hold upon the nature to make 
any deep and lasting impression. No indepen- 
dence, no self-reliance, no strength of character is 
developed. Such people are superficial and unreal. 
They ask everything and have nothing to give. 
The stream is so large and constant that there is 



THE PENALTY. 143 

nothing left in the reservoir. Friendship must rest 
on solid foundations of independence and mutual 
respect. With great clearness and force Emerson 
proclaims this law in his Essay on Friendship: 
" We must be our own before we can be another's. 
Let me be alone to the end of the world, rather than 
that my friend should overstep, by a word or a 
look, his real sympathy. Let him not cease an 
instant to be himself. The only joy I have in his 
being mine, is that the not mine is mine. I hate 
where I looked for a manly furtherance, or at least 
a manly resistance, to find a mush of concession. 
Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than 
his echo. The condition which high friendship 
demands is ability to do without it. There must be 
very two, before there can be very one. Let it 
be an alliance of two large formidable natures, 
mutually beheld, mutually feared, before yet they 
recognize the deep identity, which, beneath these 
disparities, unites them." 

THE PENALTY. 

If we refuse to go in company there is noth- 
ing left for us but to trudge along the dreary- 
way alone. — If we will not bear one another's bur- 
dens, we must bear our own when they are heaviest 
in our unaided strength ; and fall beneath their 
weight. Here as everywhere penalty is simply 
the inevitable consequence of conduct. The loveless 
heart is doomed to drag out its term of years in 
the cheerless isolation of a life from which the 
light of love has been withdrawn. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

TLhc family 

THUS far we have considered our fellow-men as 
units, with whom it is our privilege and duty to 
come into external relations. These external re- 
lations after all do not reach the deepest center of 
our lives. They indeed bind man to man in bonds 
of helpfulness and service. But the two who are thus 
united remain two separate selves after all. Even 
friendship leaves unsatisfied yearnings, undeveloped 
possibilities in human hearts. However subtle and 
tender the bond may be, it remains to the last phys- 
ical rather than chemical; mechanical rather than 
vital ; the outward attachment of mutually exclusive 
wholes, rather than the inner blending of comple- 
mental elements which lose their separate selfhood 
in the unity of a new and higher life. The beginning 
of this true spiritual life, in which the individual 
loses his separate self to find a larger and nobler 
self in a common good in which each individual 
shares, and which none may monopolize ; — the 
birthplace of the soul as of the body is in the family. 
The nursery of virtue, the inspirer of devotion, 
the teacher of self-sacrifice, the institutor of love, 
the family is the foundation of all those higher 

144 



THE DUTY. 1 45 

and nobler qualities of mind and heart which lift man 
above the level of sagacious brutes. 

THE DUTY. 

The family a common good. — Membership in 
the family involves the recognition that the true 
life of the individual is to be found only in union 
with other members ; in regard for their rights ; 
in deference to their wishes ; and in devotion to that 
common interest in which each member shares. 
Each member must live for the sake of the whole 
family. Children owe to their parents obedience, 
and such service as they are able to render. Parents, 
on the other hand, owe to children support, training, 
and an education sufficient to give them a fair start 
in life. Brothers and sisters owe to each other 
mutual helpfulness and protection. All joys and 
sorrows, all hopes and fears, all plans and purposes 
should be talked over, and carried out in common. 
No parent should have a plan or ambition or en- 
thusiasm into which he does not invite the confi- 
dence and sympathy of his child. No child should 
cherish a thought or purpose or imagination which 
he cannot share with father or mother. It is the 
duty of the parent to enter sympathetically into 
the sports and recreations and studies and curiosi- 
ties of the child. It is the duty of the child to 
interest himself in whatever the father and mother 
are doing to support the family and promote its 
welfare. Between parent and child, brother and 
sister, there should be no secrets; no ground on 



146 THE FAMILY. 

which one member lives in selfish isolation from the 
rest. 

The basis of right marriage.— These relations 
come by nature, and we grow into them so gradually 
that we are scarcely conscious of their existence, 
unless we stop on purpose to think of them. Mar- 
riage, or the foundation of a new family, however, is 
a step which we take for ourselves, once for all, in 
the maturity of our conscious powers. To know in 
advance the true from the false, the real from the 
artificial, the genuine from the counterfeit, the 
blessed from the wretched basis of marriage is the 
most important piece of information a young man or 
woman can acquire. The test is simple but search- 
ing. Do you find in another, one to whose well- 
being you can devote your life ; one to whom you 
can confide the deepest interests of your mind and 
heart ; one whose principles and purposes you can 
appreciate and respect : one in whose image you wish 
your children to be born, and on the model of whose 
character you wish their characters to be formed ; 
one whose love will be the best part of whatever 
prosperity, and the sufficient shield against what- 
ever adversity may be your common lot? Then, 
provided this other soul sees a like worth in you, and 
cherishes a like devotion for what you are and aim to 
be, marriage is not merely a duty: it is the open 
door into the purest and noblest life possible to 
man and woman. Complete identification and de- 
votion, entire surrender of each to each in mutual 
affection is the condition of true marriage. As 



THE DUTY. 147 

" John Halifax" says in refusing the hand of a noble- 
man for his daughter, "In marriage there must be 
unity — one aim, one faith, one love — or the marriage 
is imperfect, unholy, a mere civil contract, and no 
more." This necessity of complete, undivided de- 
votion of each to each is, as Hegel points out, the 
spiritual necessity on which monogamy rests. 
There can be but one complete and perfect and 
supreme merging of one's whole self in the life and 
love of another. Marriage with two would be 
of necessity marriage with none. If we apprehend 
the spiritual essence of marriage we see that mar- 
riage with more than one is a contradiction in 
terms. It is possible to cut one's self up into frag- 
ments, and bestow a part here and a part there ; but 
that is not marriage; it is mere alliance. It brings 
not love and joy and peace, but hate and wretched- 
ness and strife. 

A true marriage never can be dissolved. — If 
love be present at the beginning it will grow 
stronger and richer with every added year of 
wedded life. How far a loveless marriage should 
be enforced upon unwilling parties by the state for 
the benefit of society is a question which it is foreign 
to our present purpose to discuss. The duty of the 
individual who finds himself or herself in this dread- 
ful condition is, however, clear. There is generally 
a good deal of self-seeking on both sides at the basis 
of such marriages. Getting rather than giving was 
the real though often unsuspected hope that brought 
them together. If either husband or wife will reso- 



148 THE FAMILY. 

lutely strive to correct the fault that is in him or her, 
ceasing to demand and beginning to give unselfish 
affection and genuine devotion, in almost every 
case, where the man is not a brute or a sot, and 
the woman is not a fashion-plate or a fiend, the life 
of mutual love may be awakened, and a true mar- 
riage may supersede the empty form. Not until 
faithful and prolonged efforts to establish a true 
marriage within the legal bonds have proved unavail- 
ing; and only where adultery, desertion, habitual 
drunkenness, or gross brutality and cruelty demon- 
strate the utter impossibilty of a true marriage, is 
husband or wife justified in seeking to escape the 
bond, and to revert to the lower, individualistic 
type of life. 

THE VIRTUE. 

In the family we are members one of another. — 

The parent shows his loyalty to the child by pro- 
tecting him when he gets into trouble. The loyal 
brother defends his brothers and sisters against all 
attacks and insults. The loyal child refuses to do 
anything contrary to the known wishes of father and 
mother, or anything that will reflect discredit upon 
them. The loyal child cares for his parents and 
kindred in misfortune and old age ; ministering 
tenderly to their wants, and bearing patiently their 
infirmities of body and of mind which are incidental 
to declining powers. The loyal husband and wife 
trust each other implicitly in everything ; and refuse 
to have any confidences with others more intimate 



THE REWARD, 149 

than they have with each other. Not that the family- 
is narrow and exclusive. Husband and wife should 
each have their outside interests, friendships, and 
enthusiasms. Each should rejoice in everything 
which broadens, deepens, and sweetens the life of 
the other. Jealousy of each other is the most 
deadly poison that can be introduced into a home. 
It is sure and instant death to the peace and joy of 
married life. 

Other relations should always be secondary 
and external to the primary and inner relation 
of husband and wife to each other. — It should be 
the married self; the self which includes in its in- 
most love and confidence husband or wife ; not 
a detached and independent self, which goes out 
to form connections and attachments in the outer 
world. Where this mutual trust and confidence 
are loyally maintained there can be the greatest 
social freedom toward other men and women 
and at the same time perfect trust and devotion to 
each other. This, however, is a nice adjustment, 
which nothing short of perfect love can make. Love 
makes it easily, and as a matter of course. Loyalty 
is love exposed to strain, and overcoming strain and 
temptation by the power which love alone can 

give. 

THE REWARD. 

Loyalty to the family preserves and perpet- 
uates the home. — Home is a place where we can 
rest; where we can breathe freely; where we can 
have perfect trust in one another; where we can be 



150 THE FAMILY. 

perfectly simple, perfectly natural, perfectly frank; 
where we can be ourselves; where peace and love 
are supreme. " This/' says John Ruskin, " is the 
true nature of home — it is the place of peace; the 
shelter, not only from all injury, but from all terror, 
doubt, and division. In so far as it is not this, it is 
not home ; so far as the anxieties of the outer life 
penetrate into it, and the unknown, unloved, or hos- 
tile society of the outer world is allowed to cross the 
threshold, it ceases to be home; it is then only a 
part of the outer world which you have roofed over 
and lighted fire in. But so far as it is a sacred place, 
a vestal temple, a temple of the hearth watched over 
by household gods, before whose faces none may 
come but those whom they can receive with love, — 
so far as it is this, and roof and fire are types only 
of a nobler shade and light,— shade as of a rock in a 
weary land, and light as of a Pharos on a stormy 
sea ; so far it vindicates the name and fulfills the 
praise of home." 

THE TEMPTATION. 

The individual must drop his extreme indi- 
vidualism when he crosses the threshold of the 
home. — The years between youth and marriage 
are years of comparative independence. The 
young man and woman learn in these years to 
take their affairs into their own hands ; to direct 
their own course, to do what seems right in their 
own eyes, and take the consequences of wisdom 
or folly upon their own shoulders. This period 



THE TEMP TA TtON. 1 5 l 

of independence is a valuable discipline. It de- 
velops strength and self-reliance ; it compels the 
youth to face the stern realities of life, and to meas- 
ure himself against the world. It helps him to ap- 
preciate what his parents have done for him in the 
past, and prepares him to appreciate a home of his 
own when he comes to have one. The man and 
woman who have never known what it is to make 
their own way in the world can never be fully con- 
fident of their own powers, and are seldom able to 
appreciate fully what is done for them. 

Many an exacting husband and complaining wife 
would have had their querulousness and ingratitude 
taken out of them once for all if they could have 
had a year or two of single-handed conflict with real 
hardship. Independence and self-reliance are the 
basis of self-respect and self-control. 

At the same time this habit of independence, 
especially if it is ingrained by years of single life, 
tends to perpetuate itself in ways that are injurious to 
the highest domestic and family life. Independence 
is a magnificent foundation for marriage ; to carry 
it up above the foundation, and build the main 
structure out of it, is fatal. The insistence on 
rights, the urging of claims, the enforcement of pri- 
vate whims and fancies, are the death of love and 
the destruction of the family. Unless one is ready 
to give everything, asking nothing save what love 
gives freely in return, marriage will prove a fountain 
of bitterness rather than of sweetness; a region of 
storm and tempest rather than a haven of repose. 



IS 2 THE FAMILY. 

Within a bond so close and all-embracing there is 
no room for the independent life of separated selves. 
Each must lose self in the other; both must merge 
themselves in devotion to a common good ; or the 
bond becomes a fetter, and the home a prison. 
Unless one is prepared to give all to the object of his 
love, duty to self, to the object of his affections, and 
to the blessed state of marriage demands that he 
should offer nothing, and remain outside a relation 
which his whole self cannot enter. Independence 
outside of marriage is respectable and honorable. 
Independence and self-assertion in marriage toward 
husband or wife is mean and cruel. It is the at- 
tempt to partake of that in which we refuse to par- 
ticipate ; to claim the advantages of an organism in 
which we refuse to comply with the conditions of 
membership. Not admiration, nor fascination, nor 
sentimentality, nor flattered vanity can bind two 
hearts together in life-long married happiness. For 
these are all forms of self-seeking in disguise. Love 
alone, love that loses self in its object ; love that 
accepts service with gladness and transmutes sacri- 
fice into a joy; simple, honest, self-forgetful love 
must be the light and life of marriage, or else it will 
speedily go out in darkness and expire in death. 
Of the deliberate seeking of external ends in mar- 
riage, such as money, position, family connections* 
and the like, it ought not to be necessary to say a 
word to any thoughtful person. It is the basest act 
of which man or woman is capable. It is an insult 
to marriage ; it is a mockery of love ; it is treachery 



THE VICE OF DEFECT. I S3 

and falsehood and robbery toward the person mar- 
ried. It subordinates the lifelong welfare of a 
person to the acquisition of material things. It in- 
troduces fraud and injustice into the inmost center 
of one's life, and makes respect of self, happiness 
in marriage, faith in human nature forever im- 
possible. The deliberate formation of a loveless 
marriage is a blasphemy against God, a crime against 
society, a wrong to a fellow-being, and a bitter and 
lasting curse to one's own soul. 

THE VICE OF DEFECT. 

Self-sufficiency fatal to the family.— The short- 
coming which most frequently keeps individuals 
outside of the family, and keeps them incomplete 
and imperfect members of the family after they 
enter it, is the self-sufficiency which is induced by 
a life of protracted independence. Marriage is from 
one point of view a sacrifice, a giving-up. The 
bachelor can spend more money on himself than 
can the married man who must provide for wife and 
children. The single woman can give to study and 
music and travel an amount of time and atten- 
tion which is impossible to the wife and mother. 
Such a view of marriage is supremely mean and 
selfish. Only a very little and sordid soul could 
entertain it. There are often the best and noblest 
of reasons why man or woman should remain single. 
It is a duty to do so rather than to marry from any 
motive save purest love. Marriage, however, should 
be regarded as the ideal state for every man and 



154 THE FAMILY. 

woman. To refuse to marry for merely selfish 
reasons; or to carry over into marriage the selfish 
individualistic temper, which clings so tenaciously 
to the little individual self that it can never attain 
the larger self which comes from real union and 
devotion to another — this is to sin against human 
nature, and to prove one's self unworthy of member- 
ship in society's most fundamental and sacred insti- 
tution. 

The child who sets his own will against his 
parent's, the mother who thrusts her child out of 
her presence in order to pursue pleasures more con- 
genial than the nurture of her own offspring, the 
man who leaves his family night after night to spend 
his evenings in the club or the saloon, the woman 
who spends on dress and society the money that is 
needed to relieve her husband from overwork and 
anxiety, and to bring up her children in health and 
intelligence, do an irreparable wrong to the family, 
and deal a death blow to the home, 

THE VICE OF EXCESS. 

Self-obliteration robs the family of the best 
we have to give it. — The man who makes himself 
a slave; goes beyond his strength; denies himself 
needed rest and recreation ; grows prematurely old, 
cuts himself off from intercourse with his fellow-men 
in order to secure for his family a position or a for- 
tune : the woman who works early and late ; forgets 
her music, and forsakes her favorite books ; gives up 
friends and society : grows anxious and careworn in 



THE PENALTY. 155 

order to give her sons and daughters a better start in 
life than she had, are making a fatal mistake. In 
the effort to provide their children with material 
things and intellectual advantages they are depriv- 
ing them of what even to the children is of far more 
consequence — healthy, happy, cheerful, interesting, 
enthusiastic parents. To their children as well 
as to themselves parents owe it to be the brightest, 
cheeriest, heartiest, wisest, completest persons that 
they are capable of being. Children also when 
they have reached maturity, although they owe to 
their parents a reverent regard for all reasonable 
desires and wishes, ought not to sacrifice oppor- 
tunities for gaining a desired education or an advan- 
tageous start in business, merely to gratify a capri- 
cious whim or groundless foreboding of an arbitrary 
and unreasoning parent. Devotion to the family 
does not imply withdrawal from the world outside. 
The larger and fuller one's relations to the world 
without, the deeper and richer ought to be one's 
contribution to the family of which he is a member. 

THE PENALTY. 

To have no one for whom we supremely care, 
and no one who cares much for us ; to have no 
place where we can shield ourselves from out- 
ward opposition and inward despair ; to have no 
larger life in which we can merge the littleness 
of our solitary selves ; to touch other lives only 
on the surface, and to take no one to our 
heart ; — this is the sadl estate of the man or 



156 THE FAMILY. 

woman who refuses to enter with whole-souled 
devotion into union with another in the building 
of a family and a home. — The sense that this lone- 
liness is chosen in fidelity, to duty makes it en- 
durable for multitudes of noble men and women. 
But for the man or woman who chooses such a 
life in proud self-sufficiency, for the sake of fan- 
cied freedom and independence, it is hard to con- 
ceive what consolation can be found. Thomas Car- 
lyle, speaking of the joys of living in close union 
with those who love us, and whom we love, says : 
" It is beautiful ; it is human ! Man lives not other- 
wise, nor can live contented, anywhere or anywhen. 
Isolation is the sum-total of wretchedness to man. 
To be cut off, to be left solitary ; to have a world 
alien, not your world ; all a hostile camp for you ; 
not a home at all, of hearts and faces who are yours, 
whose you are ! It is the frightfullest enchantment ; 
too truly a work of the Evil One. To have neither 
superior, nor inferior, nor equal, united manlike to 
you. Without father, without child, without brother. 
Man knows no sadder destiny." 



CHAPTER XIX. 

Ube State. 

Out of the family grew the state. The primitive 
state was an enlarged family, of which the father 
was the head. Citizenship meant kinship, real or 
fictitious. The house or gens was a composite fam- 
ily. Houses united into tribes, and the authority of 
the chieftain over his fellow-tribesmen was still based 
on the fact that they were, either by birthright or 
adoption, his children. The ancient state was the 
union of tribes under one priest and king who was 
regarded as the father of the whole people. 

Disputes about the right of succession, and the 
disadvantage and danger of having a tyrant or a 
weakling rule, just because he happened to be the 
son of the previous ruler, led men to elect their rul- 
ers. There are to-day states like Russia where the 
hereditary monarch is the ruler: states like the 
United States where all rulers are elected by the 
people; and states like England where the nomi- 
nal ruler is an hereditary monarch, and the real rulers 
are chosen by the people. 

THE DUTY. 

The function of the state is the organization 
of the life of the people. — Men can live together in 



IS 8 THE STATE. 

peace and happiness only on condition that they 
assert for themselves and respect in others certain 
rights to life, liberty, property, reputation, and opin- 
ion. My right it is my neighbor's duty to observe. 
His right it is my duty to respect. These mutual 
rights and duties are grounded in the nature of 
things and the constitution of man. They are the 
conditions which must be observed if man is to live 
in unity with his fellow-men. It is the business of 
the state to define, declare, and enforce these rights 
and duties. And as citizens it is our duty to the 
state to do all in our power to frame just laws ; 
to see that they are impartially and effectively ad- 
ministered ; to obey these laws ourselves ; to con- 
tribute our share of the funds necessary to maintain 
the government ; and to render military service when 
force is needed to protect the government from over- 
throw. To law and government we owe all that makes 
life endurable or even possible : the security of prop- 
erty ; the sanctity of home ; the opportunity of ed- 
ucation ; the stability of institutions; the blessings 
of peace ; protection against violence and bloodshed. 
Since the state and its laws are essential to the well- 
being of all men, and consequently of ourselves; 
we owe to it the devotion of our time, our knowl- 
edge, our influence, yes, our life itself if need be. If 
it comes to a choice between living but a brief time, 
and that nobly, in devotion to country, and living a 
long time basely, in betrayal of our country's good, 
no true, brave man will hesitate to choose the for- 
mer. In times of war and revolution that choice 



THE DUTY. 159 

has been presented to men in every age and coun- 
try : and men have always been found ready to 
choose the better part ; death for country, rather 
than life apart from her. So deep was the convic- 
tion in the mind of Socrates that the laws of the 
state should be obeyed at all costs, that when he had 
been sentenced to death unjustly, and had an op- 
portunity to escape*the penalty by running away, he 
refused to do it on the ground that it was his duty 
to obey those laws which had made him what he 
was and whose protection he had enjoyed so many 
years. To the friend who tried to induce him to 
escape he replied that he seemed to hear the laws 
saying to him, "Our country is more to be valued 
and higher and holier far than father or mother. And 
when we are punished by her, whether with impris- 
onment or stripes, the punishment is to be endured 
in silence ; and if she sends us to wounds or death 
in battle, thither we follow as is right ; neither may 
anyone yield or retreat or leave his rank, but wheth- 
er in battle or in a court of law, or in any other 
place, he must do what his city and his country or- 
der him ; or he must change their view of what is 
just; and if he may do no violence to his father or 
mother, much less may he do violence to his coun- 
try." To do and bear whatever is necessary to main- 
tain that organization of life which the state repre- 
sents is the imperative duty of every citizen. This 
duty to serve the country is correlative to the right 
to be a citizen. No man can be in truth and spirit a 
citizen on any other terms. And not to be a citizen 



160 THE STATE. 

is not to be, in any true and worthy meaning of the 
term, a man. 

THE VIRTUE. 

Love of country, or patriotism, like all love 
places the object loved first and self second. — 

In all public action the patriot asks not, " What is 
best for me? " but, " What is best for my country ? " 
Patriotism assumes as many forms as there are cir- 
cumstances and ways in which the welfare of the 
country may be promoted. In time of war the 
patriot shoulders his gun and marches to fight the 
enemy. In time of election he goes to the caucus 
and the polls, and expresses his opinion and casts 
his vote for what he believes to be just measures 
and honest men. When taxes are to be levied, he 
gives the assessor a full account of his property, and 
pays his fair share of the expense of government. 
When one party proposes measures and nominates 
men whom he considers better than those of the 
opposite party, he votes with that party, whether it 
is for his private interest to do so or not. The 
patriot will not stand apart from all parties, because 
none is good enough for him. He will choose the 
best, knowing that no political party is perfect. He 
will act with that party as long as it continues to 
seem to him the best ; for he must recognize that 
one man standing alone can accomplish no practical 
political result. The moment he is convinced that 
the party with which he has been acting has become 
more corrupt, and less faithful to the interests of 



THE REWARD. 16 1 

the country than the opposite party, he will change 
his vote. Self first, personal friends second, party 
third, and country fourth, is the order of consider- 
ations in the mind of the office-seeker, the wire- 
puller, the corrupt politician. Country first, party 
second, personal friends third, and self last is the 
order in the mind of the true citizen, the courageous 
statesman, the unselfish patriot. 

THE REWARD. 

In return for serving our country we receive a 
country to serve. — The state makes possible for us 
all those pursuits, interests, aims, and aspirations 
which lift our lives above the level of the brutes. 
Through the institutions which the state maintains, 
schools, almshouses, courts, prisons, roads, bridges, 
harbors, laws, armies, police, there is secured to the 
individual the right and opportunity to acquire 
property, engage in business, travel wherever he 
pleases, share in the products of the whole earth, 
read the books of all nations, reap the fruits of 
scholarly investigation in all countries, take an in- 
terest in the welfare and progress of mankind. 
This power of the individual to live a universal life, 
this participation of each in a common and world- 
wide good, is the product of civilization. And 
civilization is impossible without that subordination 
of each to the just claims of all, which law requires 
and which it is the business of the state to enforce. 



162 THE STATE. 

THE TEMPTATION. 

Organization involves a multitude of offices 
and public servants. Many of these offices are 
less onerous and more lucrative than the aver- 
age man can find elsewhere. Many offices give 
a man an opportunity to acquire dishonest gains. 
— Hence arises the great political temptation which 
is to seek office, not as a means of rendering useful 
and honorable service to the country, but as a 
means to getting an easy living out of the country, 
and at the public expense. The " spoils system, " 
which consists in rewarding service to party by op- 
portunity to plunder the country : which pays public 
servants first for their service to party, and secondly 
for service to the country : which makes usefulness 
to party rather than serviceableness to the country 
the basis of appointment and promotion, is the 
worst evil of our political life. " Public office is a 
public trust." Men who so regard it are the only 
men fit for it. Office so held is one of the most 
honorable forms of service which a man can render to 
his fellow-men. Office secured and held by the 
methods of the spoils system is a disgrace to the 
nation that is corrupt enough to permit it, and to 
the man who is base enough to profit by it. 

THE VICE OF DEFECT. 

Betrayal of one's country and disregard of its 
interests is treason. — In time of war and revolu- 
tion treason consists in giving information to the 



THE VICE OF DEFECT. 163 

enemy, surrendering forts, ships, arms, or ammuni- 
tion into his hands ; or fighting in such a half-hearted 
way as to invite defeat. Treason under such cir- 
cumstances is the unpardonable sin against country. 
The traitor is the most despicable person in the 
state ; for he takes advantage of the protection the 
state gives to him and the confidence it places in 
him to stab and murder his benefactor and pro- 
tector. 

The essential quality of treason is manifested in 
many forms in time of peace. Whoever sacrifices 
the known interests of his country to the interests 
of himself, or of his friends, or of his party, is there- 
in guilty of the essential crime of treason. Whoever 
votes for an appropriation in order to secure for an- 
other man lucrative employment or a profitable con- 
tract ; whoever gives or takes money for a vote ; who- 
ever increases or diminishes a tax with a view to the 
business interests, not of the country as a whole, but 
of a few interested parties ; whoever accepts or 
bestows a public office on any grounds other than 
the efficiency of service which the office-holder is to 
render to the country ; whoever evades his just 
taxes; whoever suffers bad men to be elected and 
bad measures to become laws through his own negli- 
gence to vote himself and to influence others to 
vote for better men and better measures, is guilty 
of treason. For in these, which are the only ways 
possible to him, he has sacrificed the good of his 
country to the personal and private interests of him- 
self and of his friends. 



1 64 THE STATE. 

THE VICE OF EXCESS. 

True and false ambition.— The service of the 
country in public office is one of the most interest- 
ing and most honorable pursuits in which a man can 
engage. Ambition to serve is always noble. Desire 
for the honors and emoluments of public office, 
however, may crowd out the desire to render pub- 
lic service. Such a substitution of selfish for 
patriotic considerations, such an inversion of the 
proper order of interests in a man's mind, is the vice 
of political ambition. The ambitious politician 
seeks office, not because he seeks to promote meas- 
ures which he believes to be for the public good ; 
not because he believes he can promote those in- 
terests more effectively than any other available 
candidate: but just because an office makes him 
feel big ; or because he likes the excitement of 
political life ; or because he can make money 
directly or indirectly out of it. Such political 
ambition is as hollow and empty an aim as can 
possess the mind of man. And yet it deceives 
and betrays great as well as little men. It is 
our old foe of sentimentality, dressed in a new garb, 
and displaying itself on a new stage. It is the 
substitution of one's own personal feelings, for a 
direct regard for the object which makes those feel- 
ings possible. It is a very subtle vice : and the 
only safeguard against it is a deep and genuine 
devotion to countiy for country's sake, 



THE PENALTY. 165 

THE PENALTY. 

A state in which laws were broken, taxes 
evaded, and corrupt men placed in authority 
could not endure.— With the downfall of the state 
would arise the brigand, the thief, the murderer, and 
the reign of dishonesty, violence, and terror. 

The individual, it is true, may sin against the state 
and escape the full measure of this penalty himself. 
In that case, however, the penalty is distributed over 
the vast multitude of honest citizens, who bear the 
common injury which the traitor inflicts upon the 
state. The man who betrays his country, may con- 
tinue to have a country still ; but it is no thanks to 
him. It is because he reaps the reward of the 
loyalty and devotion of citizens nobler than him- 
self. 

Yet even then the country is not in the deepest 
sense really his. He cannot enjoy its derpest bless- 
ings. He cannot feel in his inmost heart, " This 
country is mine, To it I have given myself. Of it 
I am a true citizen and loyal member." He knows 
he is unworthy of his country. He knows that if his 
country could find him out, and separate him from 
the great mass of his fellow-citizens, she would re- 
pudiate him as unworthy to be called her son. The 
traitor may continue to receive the gifts of his coun- 
try; he may appropriate the blessings she bestows 
with impartial hand on the good and on the evil. 
But the sense that this glorious and righteous order 
of which the state is the embodiment and of which 



166 THE STATE. 

our country is the preserver and protector belongs 
to him ; that it is an expression of his thought, his 
will and his affection ; — this spiritual participation 
in the life and spirit of the state, this supreme devo- 
tion to a beloved country, remains for such an one 
forever impossible. In his soul, in his real nature, 
he is an outcast, an alien, and an enemy. 



CHAPTER XX. 

Society 

REGARD for others, merely as individuals, does 
not satisfy the deepest yearnings of our social 
nature. The family is so much more to us than the 
closest of ties which we can form on lines of busi- 
ness, charity, or even friendship ; because in place of 
an aggregate of individuals, each with his separate 
interests, the family presents a life in which each 
member shares in a good which is common to all. 

The state makes possible a common good on a 
much wider scale. Still, on a strict construction of 
its functions, the state merely insures the outward 
form of this wider, common life. The state declares 
what man shall not do, rather than what man shall 
do, in his relations to his fellow-men. To prevent 
the violation of mutual rights rather than to secure 
the performance of mutual duties, is the funda- 
mental function of the state. Of course these two 
sides cannot be kept entirely apart. There is a 
strong tendency at the present time to enlarge the 
province of the state, and to intrust it with the 
enforcement of positive duties which man owes to 
his fellow-men, and which class owes to class. 
Whether this tendency is good or bad, whether it is 
desirable to enforce social duties, or to trust them 

167 



1 68 SOCIETY. 

to the unfettered social conscience of mankind, is a 
theoretical question which, for our practical pur- 
poses, we need not here discuss. 

No man liveth unto himself. No man ought to 
be satisfied with a good which is peculiar to himself, 
from which mankind as a whole are excluded. No 
man can be so satisfied. Ignorance, prejudice, self- 
ishness, pride, custom, blind men to this common 
good, and prevent them from making the efforts 
and sacrifices necessary to realize it. But the man 
who could deliberately prefer to see the world in 
which he lives going to destruction would be a 
monster rather than a man. 

This common life of humanity in which each 
individual partakes is society. Society is the 
larger self of each individual. Its interests and 
ours are fundamentally one and the same. — If the 
society in which we live is elevated and pure and 
noble we share its nobleness and are elevated by it. 
If society is low, corrupt, and degraded, we share its 
corruption, and its baseness drags us down. So 
vital and intimate is this bond between society and 
ourselves that it is impossible when dealing with 
moral matters to keep them apart. To be a better 
man, without at the same time being a better 
neighbor, citizen, workman, soldier, scholar, or busi- 
ness man, is a contradiction in terms. For life con- 
sists in these social relations to our fellows. And 
the better we are, the better these social duties will 
be fulfilled. 

Society includes all the objects hitherto con- 



THE DUTY. 169 

sidered. Society is the organic life of man, in 
which the particular objects and relations of our in- 
dividual lives are elements and members. Hence 
in this chapter, and throughout the remainder of 
the book, we shall not be concerned with new 
materials, but with the materials with which we are 
already familiar, viewed in their broader and more 
comprehensive relationships. 

THE DUTY. 

In each act we should think not merely " How 
will this act affect me ? " but " How will this act 
affect all parties concerned, and society as a 
whole ? " — The interests of all men are my own, by 
virtue of that common society of which they and I 
are equal members. What is good for others is 
good for me, because, in that broader view of my 
own nature which society embodies, my good can- 
not be complete unless, to the extent of my ability, 
their good is included in my own. Hence we have 
the maxims laid down by Kant: " Act as if the 
maxim of thy action were to become by thy will a 
universal law of nature. " "So act as to treat hu- 
manity, whether in thine own person or in that of 
another, in every case as an end, never as a means 
only." Or as Professor Royce puts the same 
thought; " Act as a being would act who included 
thy will and thy neighbor's will in the unity of one 
life, and who had therefore to suffer the consequences 
for the aims of both that will follow from the act of 
either." " In so far as in thee lies, act as if thou 



170 SOCIETY. 

wert at once thy neighbor and thyself. Treat these 
two lives as one." 

The realization of the good of all in and 
through the act of each is the social ideal.— 

In everyday matters this can be brought about by 
simply taking account of all the interests of others 
which will be affected by our act. In the relations 
between employer and employee, for instance, profit 
sharing is the most practical form of realizing this 
community of interest. Such action involves a co- 
operation of interests as the motives of the indi- 
vidual act. 

The larger social ends, such as education, philan- 
thropy, reform, public improvements, require the 
co-operation of many individuals in the same enter- 
prise. The readiness to contribute a fair share of 
our time, money, and influence to these larger public 
interests, which no individual can undertake alone, 
is an important part of our social duty. Every 
beneficent cause, every effort to rouse public senti- 
ment against a wrong, or to make it effective in the 
enforcement of a right ; every endeavor to unite 
men in social intercourse; every plan to extend the 
opportunities for education ; every measure for the 
relief of the deserving poor, and the protection of 
homeless children ; every wise movement for the 
prevention of vice, crime, and intemperance, is en- 
titled to receive from each one of us the same intel- 
ligent attention, the same keenness of interest, the 
same energy of devotion, the same sacrifice of 
inclination and convenience, the same resoluteness 



THE VIRTUE. 17 l 

and courage of action that we give to our private 
affairs. 

Co-operation, then, is of two kinds, inward 
and outward: co-operation between the interests 
of others and of ourselves in the motive to our 
individual action; and co-operation of our action 
with the action of others to accomplish objects 
too vast for private undertaking.— Both forms 
of co-operation are in principle the same; they 
strengthen and support each other. The man who 
is in the habit of considering the interests of others 
in his individual acts will be more read)' to unite with 
others in the promotion of public beneficence. And 
on the other hand the man who is accustomed to 
act with others in large public movements will be 
more inclined to act for others in his personal affairs. 
The reformer and philanthropist is simply the man 
of private generosity and good-will acting out his 
nature on a larger stage. 

THE VIRTUE. 

Public spirit is the life of the community in the 
heart of the individual. — This recognition that we 
belong to society, and that society belongs to us, 
that its interests are our interests, that its wrongs 
are ours to redress, its rights are ours to maintain, 
its losses are ours to bear, its blessings are ours to 
enjoy, is public spirit. 

A generous regard for the public welfare, a 
willingness to lend a hand in any movement for the 
improvement of social conditions, a readiness with 



i? 2 SOCIETY. 

work and influence and time and money to relieve 
suffering, improve sanitary conditions, promote 
education and morality, remove temptation from 
the weak, open reading-rooms and places of harmless 
resort for the unoccupied in their evening hours, to 
bind together persons of similar tastes and pur- 
suits — these are the marks of public spirit ; these 
are the manifestations of social virtue. 

Politeness is love in little things. — Toward indi- 
viduals whom we meet in social ways this recog- 
nition of our common nature and mutual rights 
takes the form of politeness and courtesy. Po- 
liteness is proper respect for human personality. 
Rudeness results from thinking exclusively about 
ourselves, and caring nothing for the feelings of any- 
body else. The sincere and generous desire to bring 
the greatest pleasure and the least pain to every- 
one we meet will go a long way toward making our 
manners polite and courteous. 

Still, society has agreed upon certain more or less 
arbitrary ways for facilitating social intercourse ; it 
has established rules for conduct on social occasions, 
and to a certain extent prescribed the forms of 
words that shall be used, the modes of salutation 
that shall be employed, the style of dress that shall 
be worn, and the like. A due respect for society, 
and for the persons whom we meet socially, demands 
that we shall acquaint ourselves with these rules of 
etiquette, and observe them in our social inter- 
course. Like all forms, social formalities are easily 
carried to excess, and frequently kill the spirit they 



THE REWARD. 173 

are intended to express. As a basis, however, for 
the formation of acquaintances, and for large social 
gatherings, a good deal of formality is necessary. 

THE REWARD. 

The complete expression and outgo of our 
nature is freedom. — Since man is by nature social, 
since sympathy, friendship, co-operation and affec- 
tion are essential attributes of man, it follows that 
the exercise of these social virtues is itself the satis- 
faction of what is essentially ourselves. 

The man who fulfills his social duties is free, 
for he finds an open field and an unfettered 
career for the most essential faculties of his nature. 
The social man always has friends whom he loves; 
work which he feels to be worth doing ; interests 
which occupy his highest powers ; causes which ap- 
peal to his deepest sympathies. Such a life of 
rounded activity, of arduous endeavor, of full, free 
self-expression is in itself the highest possible re- 
ward. It is the only form of satisfaction worthy of 
man. It is in the deepest sense of the word success. 
For as Lowell says : 

All true whole men succeed, for what is worth 
Success's name, unless it be the thought, 
The inward surety to have carried out 
A noble purpose to a noble end. 

THE TEMPTATION. 

Instead of regarding society as a whole, and 
self as a member of that whole, it is possible to 
regard self as distinct and separate from society, 



174 SOCIETY. 

and to make the interests of this separated and 
detached self the end and aim of action. — This 
temptation is self-interest. It consists in placing 
the individual self, with its petty, private, personal 
interests, above the social self, with the large, pub- 
lic, generous interests of the social order. 

From one point of view it is easy to cheat society, 
and deprive it of its due. We can shirk our social 
obligations ; we can dodge subscriptions ; we can 
stay at home when we ought to be at the committee 
meeting, or the public gathering ; we can decline in- 
vitations and refuse elections to arduous offices, and 
at the same time escape many of the worst penalties 
which would naturally follow from our neglect. For 
others, more generous and noble than we, will step 
in and take upon themselves our share of the public 
burdens in addition to their own. We may flatter 
ourselves that we have done a very shrewd thing in 
contriving to reap the benefits without bearing the 
burdens of society. There is, as we shall see, a 
penalty for negligence of social duty, and that too 
most sure and terrible. Self-interest is the seed, of 
which meanness is the full-grown plant, and of 
which social constraint and slavishness are the final 
fruits. 

THE VICE OF DEFECT. 

Lack of public spirit is meanness. — The mean 
man is he who acknowledges no interest and recog- 
nizes no obligation outside the narrow range of his 
strictly private concerns. As long as he is comfort- 



THE VICE OF EXCESS. 175 

able he will take no steps to relieve the distress of 
others. If his own premises are healthy, he will 
contribute nothing to improve the sanitary condi- 
tion of his village or city. As long as his own prop- 
erty is secure he cares not how many criminals are 
growing up in the street, how many are sent to 
prison, or how they are treated after they come 
there. He favors the cheapest schools, the poorest 
roads, the plainest public buildings, because he 
would rather keep his money in his own pocket than 
contribute his share to maintain a thoroughly effi- 
cient and creditable public service. He will give 
nothing he can help giving, do nothing he can help 
doing, to make the town he lives in a healthier, 
happier, purer, wiser, nobler place. Meanness is the 
sacrifice of the great social whole to the individual. 
It is selfishness, stinginess, and ingratitude com- 
bined. It is the disposition to receive all that so- 
ciety contributes to the individual, and to give noth- 
ing in return. It is a willingness to appropriate the 
fruits of labors in which one refuses to bear a part. 

THE VICE OF EXCESS. 

The officious person is ready for any and every 
kind of public service, providing he can be at the 
head of it. There is no end to the work he will 
do if he can only have his own way. — He wants to 
be prime mover in every enterprise : to be chairman 
of the committee ; to settle every question that 
comes up ; to " run " things according to his own 
ideas. Such people are often very useful. It is 



176 SOCIETY, 

generally wisest not to meddle much with them. 
The work may not be done in the best way by 
these officious people ; but without them a great 
deal of public work would never be done at all. 
The vice, however, seriously impairs one's use- 
fulness. The officious person is hard to work 
with. Men refuse to have anything to do with 
him. And so he is left to do his work for the 
most part alone. Officiousness is, in reality, 
social ambition ; and that again as we saw 
resolves itself into sentimentality ; — the regard 
for what we and others think of ourselves, rather 
than straightforward devotion to the ends which 
we pretend to be endeavoring to promote. 
Officiousness is self-seeking dressed up in the uni- 
form of service. The officious person, instead of 
losing his private self in the larger life of society, 
tries to use the larger interests of society in such 
a way as to make them gratify his own personal 
vanity and sense of self-importance. 

THE PENALTY. 

All meanness and self-seeking are punished by 
lack of freedom or constraint ; though frequently 
the constraint is inward and spiritual rather than 
outward and physical. — We have seen that to the 
man of generous public spirit society presents a 
career for the unfolding and expansion of his social 
powers. To such a man society, with its claims and 
obligations, is an enlargement of his range of sym- 
pathy, a widening of his spiritual horizon, and on 



THE PENALTY. 1 77 

that account a means of larger liberty and fuller 
freedom. 

To the mean and selfish man, on the contrary, 
society presents itself as an alien force, a hard task- 
master, making severe requirements upon his time, 
imposing cramping limitations on his self-indulgence, 
levying heavy taxes upon his substance ; prescribing 
onerous rules and regulations for his conduct. 

By excluding society from the sphere of interests 
with which he indentifies himself, the mean man, 
by his own meanness, makes society antagonistic 
to him, and himself its reluctant and unwilling 
slave. Serve it to some extent he must; but 
the selfishness and meanness of his own attitude 
toward it, makes social service, not the willing and 
joyous offering of a free and devoted heart, but 
the slavish submission of a reluctant will, forced to 
do the little that it cannot help doing by legal or 
social compulsion. 

To him society is not a sphere of freedom, in 
which his own nature is enlarged, intensified, 
liberated ; and so made richer, happier, nobler, 
and freer. To him society is an external power, 
compelling him to make sacrifices he does not 
want to make ; to do things he does not want to 
do ; to contribute money which he grudges, and 
to conform to requirements which he hates. By try- 
ing to save the life of self-interest and meanness, 
he loses the life of generous aims, noble ideals, 
and heroic self devotion. 

By refusing the career of noble freedom which 



I7 8 SOCIETY. 

social service offers to each member of the social 
body, he is constrained to obey a social law which 
he has not helped to create, and to serve the inter- 
ests of a society of which he has refused to be 
in spirit and truth a part. 

This living in a world which we do not heartily 
acknowledge as our own ; this subjection to an au- 
thority which we do not in principle recognize and 
welcome as the voice of our own better, larger, 
wiser, social self, — this is constraint and slavery in 
its basest and most degrading form. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

Seit 

HITHERTO we have considered things, relations, 
persons, and institutions outside ourselves as the 
objects which together constitute our environment. 

The self is not a new object, but rather the bond 
which binds together into unity all the experiences 
of life. It is their relation to this conscious self 
which gives to all objects their moral worth. Every 
act upon an object reacts upon ourselves. The vir- 
tues and vices, the rewards and penalties that we 
have been studying are the various reactions of con- 
duct upon ourselves. This chapter then will be a 
comprehensive review and summary of all that has 
gone before. Instead of taking one by one the par- 
ticular reactions which follow particular acts with 
reference to particular objects, we shall now look at 
conduct as a whole ; regard our environment in its 
totality ; and consider duty, virtue, and self in their 
unity. 

THE DUTY. 

The duty we owe to ourselves is the realization 
of our capacities and powers in harmony with 
each other, and in proportion to their worth as 
elements in a complete individual and social 
life. — We have within us the capacity for an ever 

179 



180 SELF. 

increasing fullness and richness and intensity of 
life. The materials out of which this life is to be 
developed are ready to our hands in those objects 
which we have been considering. One way of con- 
duct toward these objects, which we have called 
duty ; one attitude of mind and will toward them 
which we have called virtue, leads to those com- 
pletions and fulfillments of ourselves which we 
have called rewards. Duty then to self; duty in 
its most comprehensive aspect, is the obligation 
which the existence of capacity within and material 
without imposes on us to bring the two together in 
harmonious relations, so as to realize the capacities 
and powers of ourselves and of others, and promote 
society's well being. In simpler terms our funda- 
mental duty is to make the most of ourselves; and 
to become as large and genuine a part of the social 
world in which we live as it is possible for us to be. 

THE VIRTUE. 

The habit of seeking to realize the highest ca- 
pacities and widest relationships of our nature 
in every act is conscientiousness. Conscience 
is our consciousness of the ideal in conduct 
and character. Conscience is the knowledge 
of our duty, coupled as that knowledge always 
is with the feeling that we ought to do it. — 
Knowledge of any kind calls up some feeling ap- 
propriate to the fact known. Knowledge that a 
given act would realize my ideal calls up the feel- 
ing of dissatisfaction with myself until that act is 



THE VIRTUE. 181 

performed ; because that is the feeling appropriate 
to the recognition of an unrealized yet attainable 
ideal. Conscience is not a mysterious faculty of 
our nature. It is simply thought and feeling, 
recognizing and responding to the fact of duty, and 
reaching out toward virtue and excellence. 

The objective worth of the deliverances and dic- 
tates of the conscience of the individual, depends on 
the degree of moral enlightenment and sensitiveness 
he has attained. The conscience of an educated 
Christian has a worth and authority which the con- 
science of the benighted savage has not. Since 
conscience is the recognition of the ideal of conduct 
and character, every new appreciation of duty and 
virtue gives to conscience added strength and clear- 
ness. 

The absolute authority of conscience. — Rela- 
tively to the individual himself, at the time of 
acting, his own individual conscience is the final and 
absolute authority. The man who does what his 
conscience tells him, does the best that he can do. 
For he realizes the highest ideal that is present to 
his mind. A wiser man than he might do better 
than this man, acting according to his conscience, is 
able to do. But this man, with the limited knowl- 
edge and imperfect ideal which he actually has, can 
do no more than obey his conscience which bids him 
realize the highest ideal that he knows. The act of 
the conscientious man may be right or wrong, 
judged by objective, social standards. Judged by 
subjective standards, seen from within, every con- 



102 SELF. 

scientious act is, relatively to the individual himself, 
a right act. We should spare no pains to enlighten 
our conscience, and make it the reflection of the most 
exalted ideals which society has reached. Hav- 
ing done this, conscience becomes to us the au- 
thoritative judge for us of what we shall, and what 
we shall not do. The light of conscience will be 
clear and pure, or dim and clouded, according to the 
completeness of our moral environment, training, 
and insight. But clear or dim, high or low, sensitive 
or dull, the light of conscience is the only light we 
have to guide us in the path of virtue. In hours of 
leisure and study it is our privilege to inform and 
clarify this consciousness of the ideal. That has 
been the purpose of the preceding pages. When 
the time for action comes, then, without a murmur, 
without an instant's hesitation, the voice of con- 
science should be implicitly obeyed. Conscientious- 
ness is the form which all the virtues take, when 
viewed as determinations of the self. It is the asser- 
tion of the ideal of the self in its every act. 

THE REWARD. 

Character the form in which the results of vir- 
tuous conduct is preserved. — It is neither possi- 
ble nor desirable to solve each question of conduct 
as it arises by conscious and explicit reference to 
rules and principles. Were we to attempt to do so 
it would make us prigs and prudes. 

What then is the use of studying at such length 
the temptations and duties, the virtues and vices, 



THE REWARD. 183 

with their rewards and penalties, if all these things 
are to be forgotten and ignored when the occasions 
for practical action arrive? 

The study of ethics has the same use as the 
study of writing, grammar, or piano-playing. In 
learning to write we have to think precisely how 
each letter is formed, how one letter is connected 
with another, where to use capitals, where to 
punctuate and the like. But after we have 
become proficient in writing, we do all this 
without once thinking explicitly of any of these 
things. In learning to play the piano we have to 
count out loud in order to keep time correctly, and 
we are obliged to stop and think just where to put 
the finger in order to strike each separate note. 
But the expert player does all these things with- 
out the slightest conscious effort. 

Still, though the particular rules and principles 
are not consciously present in each act of the finished 
writer or musician, they are not entirely absent. 
When the master of these arts makes a mistake, he 
recognizes it instantly, and corrects it, or endeavors 
to avoid its repetition. This shows that the rule is 
not lost. It has ceased to be before the mind as a 
distinct object of consciousness. It is no longer 
needed in that form for ordinary purposes. In- 
stead, it has come to be a part of the mind itself — a 
way in which the mind works instinctively. As 
long as the mind works in conformity with the prin- 
ciple, it is not distinctly recognized, because there 
is no need for such recognition. The principle 



184 SELF, 

comes to consciousness only as a power to check 
or restrain acts that are at variance with it. 

It is in this way that the practical man carries 
with him his ethical principles. He does not stop 
to reason out the relation of duty and virtue to re- 
ward, or of temptation and vice to penalty, before 
he decides to help the unfortunate, or to be faithful 
to a friend, or to vote on election day. This trained, 
habitual will, causing acts to be performed in conform- 
ity to duty and virtue, yet without conscious refer- 
ence to the explicit principles that underlie them, 
is character. 

It is chiefly in the formation of character that the 
explicit recognition of ethical principles has its 
value.yCharacter is a storage battery in which the 
power acquired by our past acts is accumulated and 
preserved for future use.^ 

It is through this power of character, this tendency 
of acts of a given nature to repeat and perpetuate 
themselves, that we give unity and consistency to 
our lives. This also is the secret of our power of 
growth. As soon as one virtue has become habitual 
and enters into our character, we can leave it, trust- 
ing it in the hands of this unconscious power of self- 
perpetuation ; and then we can turn the energy 
thus freed toward the acquisition of new virtues. 

Day by day we are turning over more and more 
of our lives to this domain of character. Hence it 
is of the utmost importance to allow nothing to 
enter this almost irrevocable state of unconscious, 
habitual character that has not first received the ap- 



THE REWARD. 185 

proval of conscience, the sanction of duty, and the 
stamp of virtue. Character, once formed in a wrong 
direction, may be corrected. But it can be done 
only with the greatest difficulty, and by a process 
as hard to resolve upon as the amputation of a 
limb or the plucking out of an eye. 

The greater part of the principles of ethics we 
knew before we undertook this formal study. We 
learned them from our parents ; we picked them 
up in contact with one another in the daily inter- 
course of life. The value of our study will not con- 
sist so much in new truths learned, as in the clearer 
and sharper outlines which it will have given to 
some of the features of the moral ideal. The defi- 
nite results of such a study we cannot mark or 
measure. Just as sunshine and rain come to the 
plants and trees, and then seem to vanish, leaving 
no visible or tangible trace behind ; yet the plants 
and trees are different from what they were before, 
and have the heat and moisture stored up within 
their structure to burst forth into fresher and larger 
life ; in like manner, though we should forget every 
formal statement that we have read, yet we could 
not fail to be affected by the incorporation within 
ourselves in the form of character of some of these 
principles of duty and virtue which we have been 
considering. It has been said : vSow an act, and you 
reap a habit ; sow a habit and yow reap a character ; 
sow a character and you reap a destiny." sJ 



*86 SELF. 

THE TEMPTATION. 

Pleasure not a reliable guide to conduct. — The 

realization of capacity brings with it pleasure. The 
harmonious realization of all our powers would bring 
harmonious and permanent pleasure or happiness. 
Pleasure is always to be welcomed as a sign of health 
and activity. Other things being equal, the more 
pleasure we have the better. It is possible how- 
ever to abstract the pleasure from the activity which 
gives rise to it, and make pleasure the end for which 
we act. This pursuit of pleasure for pleasure's 
sake is delusive and destructive. It is delusive, be- 
cause the direct aim at pleasure turns us aside from 
the direct aim at objects. And when we cease to aim 
directly at objects, we begin to lose the pleasure 
and zest which only a direct pursuit of objects can 
produce. For instance, we all know that if we go 
to a picnic or a party thinking all the while about 
having a good time, and asking ourselves every now 
and then whether we are having a good time or not, 
we find the picnic or party a dreadful bore, and our- 
selves perfectly miserable. We know that the whole 
secret of having a good time on such occasions is 
to get interested in something else : a game, a boat- 
ride, anything that makes us forget ourselves and 
our pleasures, and helps us to lose ourselves in the 
eager, arduous, absorbing pursuit of something out- 
side ourselves. Then we have a glorious time. 

The direct pursuit of pleasure is destructive of 
character, because it judges things by the way they 



THE TEMPTATION. 187 

affect our personal feelings ; which is a very shallow 
and selfish standard of judgment; and because it 
centers interest in the merely emotional side of our 
nature, which is peculiar to ourselves ; instead of in 
the rational part of our nature which is common to 
all men, and unites us to our fellows. 

Duty demands not the hap-hazard realization of 
this or that side of our nature. Yet this is what the 
pursuit of pleasure would lead to. Duty demands 
the realization of all our faculties, in harmony with 
each other, and in proportion to their worth. And 
to this proportioned and harmonious realization, 
pleasure, pure and simple, is no guide at all. Hence, 
as Aristotle remarks, " In all cases we must be spe- 
cially on our guard against pleasant things and 
against pleasure ; for we can scarce judge her im- 
partially." u Again, as the exercises of our faculties 
differ in goodness and badness, and some are to be 
desired and some to be shunned, so do the several 
pleasures differ; for each exercise has its proper pleas- 
ure. The pleasure which is proper to a good activ- 
ity, then, is good, and that which is proper to one 
that is not good is bad." " As the exercises of- the 
faculties vary, so do their respective pleasures." 

To the same effect John Stuart Mill says that the 
pleasures which result from the exercise of the 
higher faculties are to be preferred. " It is better 
to be a human being dissatisfied, than a pig satisfied ; 
better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satis- 
fied." Whether it is possible to stretch, and qualify, 
and attenuate the conception of pleasure sc as to 



1 88 SELF. 

make it cover the ideal of human life, without hav- 
ing it, like a soap-bubble, burst in the process, is a 
question foreign to the practical purpose of this 
book. That pleasure, as ordinarily understood by- 
plain people, is a treacherous, dangerous, and ruin- 
ous guide to conduct, moralists of every school 
declare. Pleasure is the most subtle and universal 
form of temptation. Pleasure is the accompaniment 
of all exercise of power. When it comes rightly it 
is to be accepted with thankfulness. We must re- 
member however that the quality of the act deter- 
mines the worth of the pleasure ; and that the 
amount of pleasure does not determine the quality of 
the act. A pleasant act may be right, and it may be 
wrong. Whether we ought to do it or not must in 
every case be decided on higher grounds. 

To the boy who says, "I should like to be some- 
thing that would make me a great man, and very 
happy besides — something that would not hinder 
me from having a great deal of pleasure " — George 
Eliot represents "Romola" as replying, " That is not 
easy, my Lillo. It is only a poor sort of happiness 
that could evercome by caring very much about our 
own narrow pleasures. We can only have the highest 
happiness, such as goes along with being a great 
man, by having wide thoughts, and much feeling 
for the rest of the world as well as for ourselves ; 
and this sort of happiness often brings so much pain 
with it that we can only tell it from pain by its being 
what we would choose before everything else, 
because our souls see it is good. And so, my Lillo, 



THE VICE OF DEFECT. 189 

if you mean to act nobly and seek to know the best 
things God has put within reach of men, you must 
learn to fix your mind on that end, and not on what 
will happen to you because of it. And remem- 
ber, if you were to choose something lower, and 
make it the rule of your life to seek your own 
pleasure and escape from what is disagreeable, cala- 
mity might come just the same ; and it would be 
calamity falling on a base mind, which is the one 
form of sorrow that has no balm in it, and that may 
well make a man say — It would have been bet- 
ter forme if I had never been born." 

THE VICE OF DEFECT. 

The unscrupulous man acts as he happens to 
feel like acting. — Whatever course of conduct pre- 
sents itself as pleasant, or profitable, or easy, he 
adopts. Anything is good enough for him. He 
seeks to embody no ideal, aims consistently at no 
worthy end, acknowledges no duty, but simply 
yields himself a passive instrument for lust, or 
avarice, or cowardice, or falsehood to play upon. 
Refusing to be the servant of virtue he becomes the 
slave of vice. Disowning the authority of duty and 
the ideal, he becomes the tool of appetite, the foot- 
ball of circumstance. Unscrupulousness is the form 
of all the vices of defect, when viewed in relation to 
that absence of regard for realization of self, which 
is their common characteristic. 



1 90 SELF. 

THE VICE OF EXCESS. 

The exclusive regard for self, in abstraction 
from those objects and social relationships 
through which alone the self can be truly real- 
ized, leads to formalism. — Formalism keeps the 
law simply for the sake of keeping it. Conscientious- 
ness, if it is wise and well-balanced, reverences the 
duties and requirements of the moral life, because 
these duties are the essential conditions of individ- 
ual and social well-being. The law is a means to 
well-being, which is the end. Formalism makes 
the law an end in itself ; and will even sacrifice 
well-being to law, when the two squarely conflict. 

Extreme cases in which moral laws may be 
suspended. — The particular duties, virtues, and 
laws which society has established and recognized 
are the expressions of reason and experience 
declaring the conditions of human well-being. As 
such they deserve our profoundest respect ; our un- 
swerving obedience. Still it is impossible for rules 
to cover every case. There are legitimate, though 
very rare, exceptions, even to moral laws and duties. 
For instance it is a duty to respect the property 
of others. Yet to save the life of a person who is 
starving, we are justified in taking the property of 
another without asking his consent. To save a per- 
son from drowning, we may seize a boat belonging 
to another. To spread the news of a fire, we may 
take the first horse we find, without inquiring who 
is the owner. To save a sick person from a fatal 



THE VICE OF EXCESS. 191 

shock, we may withold facts in violation of the 
strict duty of truthfulness. To promote an impor- 
tant public measure, we may deliberately break 
down our health, spend our private fortune, and re- 
duce ourselves to helpless beggary. Such acts 
violate particular duties. They break moral laws. 
And yet they all are justified in these extreme 
cases by the higher law of love ; by the greater duty 
of devotion to the highest good of our fellow-men. 
The doctrine that " the end justifies the means " is 
a mischievous and dangerous doctrine. Stated in 
that unqualified form, it is easily made the excuse 
for all sorts of immorality. The true solution of 
the seeming conflict of duties lies in the recognition 
that the larger social good justifies the sacrifice of 
the lesser social good when the two conflict. One 
must remember, however, that the universal recog- 
nition of established duties and laws is itself the 
greatest social good ; and only the most extreme 
cases can justify a departure from the path of 
generally recognized and established moral law. 

These extreme cases when they occur, however, 
must be dealt with bravely. The form of law and 
rule must be sacrificed to the substance of righte- 
ousness and love when the two conflict. As Prof- 
essor Marshall remarks in the chapter of his " His- 
tory of Greek Philosophy" which deals with Socrates, 
" The highest activity does not always take the 
form of conformity to rule. There are critical mo- 
ments when rules fail, when, in fact, obedience to 
rule would mean disobedience to that higher law, of 



I9 2 SELF. 

which rules and formulae are at best only an adum- 
bration. " 

There is nothing more contemptible than that 
timid, self-seeking virtue which will sacrifice the 
obvious well-being of others to save itself the pain 
of breaking a rule. There is nothing more pitiful 
than that self-righteous virtue which does right, 
not because it loves the right, still less because it 
loves the person who is affected by its action, but 
simply because it wants to keep its own sweet sense 
of self-righteousness unimpaired. Mrs. Browning 
gives us a clear example of this "harmless life, she 
called a virtuous life," in the case of the frigid 
aunt of " Aurora Leigh" : 

From that day, she did 
Her duty to me (I appreciate it 
In her own word as spoken to herself), 
Her duty, in large measure, well-pressed out, 
But measured always. She was generous, bland, 
More courteous than was tender, gave me still 
The first place, — as if fearful that God's saints 
Would look down suddenly and say, ' Herein 
You missed a point, I think, through lack of love.' 

THE PENALTY. 

Just as continuity in virtue strengthens and 
unifies character and makes life a consistent and 
harmonious whole ; so self-indulgence in vicious 
pleasures disorganizes a man's life and eats the 
heart out of him. — Corrupt means, literally broken. 
The corrupt man has no soundness, no solidity, no 
unity in his life. He cannot respect himself. 



THE PENALTY. 193 

Others cannot put confidence in him. There is no 
principle binding each part of his life to every other, 
and holding the whole together. The other words 
by which we describe such a life all spring from the 
same conception. We call such a person dissolute; 
and dissolute means literally separated, loosed, 
broken apart. We call him dissipated ; and dissi- 
pated means literally scattered, torn apart, thrown 
away. 

These forms of statement all point to the same 
fact, that the unscrupulous pleasure-seeker, the sel- 
fish, vicious man has no consistent, continuous, co- 
herent life whatever. " The unity of his being," as 
Janet says, " is lost in the multiplicity of his sensa- 
tions. " His life is a mere series of disconnected 
fragments. There is no growth, no development. 
There is nothing on which he can look with ap- 
proval ; no consistent career of devotion to worthy 
objective ends, the fruits of which can be witnessed 
in the improvement of the world in which he has 
lived, and stored up in the character which he has 
formed. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

(Soft* 

In the last chapter we saw that the particular ob- 
jects and duties which make up our environment 
and moral life are not so many separate affairs ; but 
all have a common relation to the self, and its reali- 
zation. We saw that this common relation to the 
self gives unity to the world of objects, the life of 
duty, the nature of virtue, and the character which 
crowns right living. 

There is, however, a deeper, more comprehensive 
unity in the moral world than that which each man 
constructs for his individual self. The world of ob- 
jects is included in a universal order. The several 
duties are parts of a comprehensive righteousness, 
which includes the acts of all men within its right- 
ful sway. The several virtues are so many aspects 
of one all-embracing moral ideal. The rewards 
and penalties which follow virtue and vice are the 
expression of a constitution of things which makes 
for righteousness. The Being whose thought in- 
cludes all objects in one comprehensive universe of 
reason; whose will is uttered in the voice of duty; 
whose holiness is revealed in the highest ideal of 
virtue we can form ; and whose authority is declared 
in those eternal and indissoluble bonds which bind 

194 



THE DUTY. 195 

virtue and reward, vice and penalty, together, is 
God. 

THE DUTY. 

Communion with God is the safeguard of virtue, 
the secret of resistance to temptation, the source 
of moral and spiritual power. — Our minds are too 
small to carry consciously and in detail ; our wills 
are too frail to hold in readiness at every moment 
the principles and motives of moral conduct. God 
alone is great enough for this. 

We can make him the keeper of our moral precepts 
and the guardian of our lives. And then when we 
are in need of guidance, help, and strength, we can 
go to him, and by devoutly seeking to know and do 
his will, we can recover the principles and reinforce 
the motives of right conduct that we have in- 
trusted to his keeping ; and ofttimes we get, in ad- 
dition, larger views of duty and nobler impulses to 
virtue than we have ever consciously possessed be- 
fore. Just as the love of father or mother clarifies a 
child's perception of what is right, and intensifies his 
will to do it, so the love of God has power to make 
us strong to resist temptation, resolute to do our 
duty, and strenuous in the endeavor to advance the 
kingdom of righteousness and love. 

Into the particular doctrines and institutions of 
religion it is not the purpose of this book to enter. 
These are matters which each individual learns 
best from his own father and mother, and from 
the church in which he has been brought up. Our 



I9 6 GOD. 

account of ethics, however, would be seriously in- 
complete, were we to omit to point out the immense 
and indispensable strength and help we may gain 
for the moral life, by approaching it in the religious 
spirit. 

Ethics and religion each needs the other. — 
They are in reality, one the detailed and particular, 
the other the comprehensive and universal aspect of 
the same world of duty and virtue. Morality with- 
out religion is a cold, dry, dreary, mass of discon- 
nected rules and requirements. Religion without 
morality, is an empty, formal, unsubstantial shadow. 
Only when the two are united, only when we bring 
to the particular duties of ethics the infinite aspira- 
tion and inspiration of religion, and give to the 
universal forms of religion the concrete contents of 
human and temporal relationships, do we gain a 
spiritual life which is at the same time clear and 
strong, elevated and practical, ideal and real. 

THE VIRTUE. 

Just as God includes all objects in his thought, 
all duties in his will, all virtues in his ideal ; so 
the man who communes with him, and surren- 
ders his will to him in obedience and trust and 
love, partakes of this same wholeness and holi- 
ness. — Loving God, he is led to love all that God 
loves, to love all good. And holiness is the love of 
all that is good and the hatred of all that is evil. 

Complete holiness is not wrought out in its con- 
crete relations all at once, nor ever in this earthly 



THE VIRTUE, 197 

life, by the religious, any more than by the moral 
man. Temptations are frequent all along the way, 
and the falls many and grevious to the last. But 
from all deliberately cherished identification of his 
inmost heart and will with evil, the truly religious 
man is forevermore set free. From the moment 
one's will is entirely surrendered to God, and the 
divine ideal of life and conduct is accepted, a new 
and holy life begins. 

Old temptations may surprise him into unright- 
eous deeds ; old habits may still assertth emselves, 
old lusts may drift back on the returning tides of 
past associations ; old vices may continue to crop 
out. 

In reality, however, they are already dead. They 
are like the leaves that continue to look green upon 
the branches of a tree that has been cut down ; or 
the momentum of a train after the steam is shut off 
and the brakes are on. 

God, who is all-wise, sees that in such a man sin is 
in principle dead ; and he judges him accordingly. 
If penitence for past sins and present falls be genu- 
ine ; if the desire to do his will be earnest; He 
takes the will for the deed, penitence for perfor- 
mance, aspiration for attainment. Such judgment 
is not merely merciful. It is just. Or rather, it is 
the blending of mercy and justice in love. It is 
judgment according to the deeper, internal aspect of 
a man, instead of judgment according to the super- 
ficial, outward aspect. For the will is the center 
and core of personality. What a man desires and 



I9 8 GOD. 

strives for with all his heart, that he is. What he 
repents of and repudiates with the whole strength 
of his frail and imperfect nature, that he has ceased 
to be. 

Thus religion, or whole-souled devotion to God, 
gives a sense of completeness, and attainment, and 
security, and peace, which mere ethics, or adjust- 
ment to the separate fragmentary objects which 
constitute our environment, can never give. The 
moral life is from its very nature partial, fragmen- 
tary, and finite. The religious life by penitence 
and faith and hope and love, rises above the finite 
with its limitations, and the temporal with its sins 
and failings, and lays hold on the infinite ideal and 
the eternal goodness, with its boundless horizon and 
its perfect peace. The religious life, like the moral, 
is progressive. But, as Principal Caird remarks, 
" It is progress, not towards, but within, the infinite." 
Union with God in sincere devotion to his holy will, 
is the " promise and potency" of harmonious rela- 
tions with that whole ethical and spiritual universe 
which his thought and will includes. 

THE REWARD. 

The reward of communion with God and com- 
prehensive righteousness of conduct is spiritual 
life. — The righteous man, the man who walks with 
God, is in principle and purpose indentified with 
every just cause, with every step of human progress, 
with every sphere of man's well-being. To him 
property is a sacred trust, time a golden oppor- 



THE REWARD. *99 

tunity, truth a divine revelation, Nature the 
visible garment of God, humanity a holy brother- 
hood, the family, society, and the state are God- 
ordained institutions, with God-given laws. 
Through the one fundamental devotion of his heart 
and will to God, the religious man ismade a par- 
taker in all these spheres of life in which the creative 
will of God is progressively revealed. All that is 
God's belong to the religious man. For he is 
God's child. And all these things are his inheri- 
tance. 

To the religious man, therefore, there is open a 
boundless career for service, sacrifice, devotion and 
appropriation. Every power, every affection, every 
aspiration within him has its counterpart in the 
outward universe. The universe is his Father's 
house ; and therefore his own home. All that it 
contains are so many opportunities for the develop- 
ment and realization of his God-given nature. 

To dwell in active, friendly, loving relation to 
all that is without ; to be 

wedded to this goodly universe 
In love and holy passion, 

to be heirs with God of the spiritual riches it 
contains: this is life indeed. " The gift of God 
is eternal life. " 

Religion is the crown and consummation 
of ethics. — Religion gathers up into their unity 
the scattered fragments of duty and virtue which 
it has been the aim of our ethical studies to dis- 



200 GOD. 

cern apart. Religion presents as the will of the all- 
wise, all-loving Father, those duties and virtues 
which ethics presents as the conditions of our own 
self-realization. Religion is the perfect circle of 
which the moral virtues are the constituent arcs. 
Fullness of life is the reward of righteousness, the 
gift of God, the one comprehensive good, of which 
the several rewards which follow the practice of 
particular duties and virtues are the constituent 
elements. 

THE TEMPTATION. 

The universal will of God, working in con- 
formity with impartial law, and seeking the 
equal good of all, often seems to be in sharp con- 
flict with the interests of the individual self.— If 

his working is irresistible we are tempted to repine 
and rebel. If his will is simply declared, and left 
for us to carry out by the free obedience of our wills, 
then we are tempted to sacrifice the universal good 
to which the divine will points, and to assert instead 
some selfish interest of our own. Self-will is, from 
the religious point of view, the form of all tempta- 
tion. The ends at which God aims when he bids us 
sacrifice our immediate private interests are so re- 
mote that they seem to us unreal ; and often they 
are so vast that we fail to comprehend them at 
all. In such crises faith alone can save us — faith 
to believe that God is wiser than we are, faith to be- 
lieve that his universal laws are better than any pri- 
vate exceptions we can make in our own interest, 



THE VICE OF DEFECT. 201 

faith to believe that the universal good is of more 
consequence than our individual gain. Such faith 
is hard to grasp and difficult to maintain ; and con- 
sequently the temptation of self-will is exceedingly 
seductive, and is never far from any one of us. 

THE VICE OF DEFECT. 

Sin is short-coming, missing the mark of our 
true being, which is to be found only in union 
with God. — Sin is the attempt to live apart from 
God, or as if there were no God. It is transgression 
of his laws. It is the attempt to make a world of 
our own, from which in whole or in part we try 
to exclude God, and escape the jurisdiction of his 
laws. All wrong-doing, all vice, all neglect of duty, 
is in reality a violation of the divine will. But not 
until the individual comes to recognize the divine 
will, and in spite of this recognition that all duty 
is divine, deliberately turns aside from God and 
duty together, does vice become sin. 

THE VICE OF EXCESS. 

Devotion to God as distinct from or in oppo- 
sition to devotion to those concrete duties and 
human relationship wherein the divine will is 
expressed, is hypocrisy. — " If a man say I love God 
and hateth his brother he is a liar : for he that 
loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, cannot 
love God whom he hath not seen." 

Pure religion begins in faith and ends in works. 
It draws from God the inspiration to serve in right- 



202 QOD. 

eousness and love our fellow-men. If faith stop short 
of God, and rest in church, or creed, or priest ; if 
work stop short of actual service of our fellow-men, 
and rest in splendor of ritual or glow of pious feel- 
ing, or orthodoxy of belief; then our religion be- 
comes a vain and hollow thing, and we become 
Pharisees and hypocrites. 

THE PENALTY. 

The wages of sin is death. — The penalty of each 
particular vice we have seen to be the dwarfing, stunt- 
ing, decay, and deadening of that particular side of 
our nature that is effected by it. Intemperance 
brings disease; wastefulness brings want ; cruelty 
brings brutality; ugliness brings coarseness; exclu- 
siveness brings isolation ; treason brings anarchy. 
Just in so far as one cuts himself off from the moral 
order which is the expression of God's will ; just in 
so far as there is sin, there is privation, deadening, 
and decay. As long as we live in this world it is 
impossible to live an utterly vicious life; to cut our- 
selves off completely from God and his order and 
his laws. To do that would be instant death. The 
man who should embody all the vices and none of 
the virtues, would be intolerable to others, unen- 
durable even to himself. The penalty of an all- 
around life of vice and sin would be greater than 
man could endure and live. This fearful end is sel- 
dom reached in this life. Some redeeming virtues 
save even the worst of men from this full and final 
penalty of sin. The man, however, who deliberately 



THE PEXALTY. 203 

rejects God as his friend and guide to righteous 
living; the man who deliberately makes self-will and 
sin the ruling principle of his life, is started on a 
road, which, if followed to the end, leads inevitably 
to death. He is excluding himself from that sphere 
of good, that career of service and devotion, where- 
in alone true life is to be found. He is banishing 
himself to that outer darkness which is our figurative 
expression for the absence of all those rewards of 
virtue and the presence of all those penalties of vice 
which our previous studies have brought to our 
attention. "Sin, when it is full-grown, bringeth 
forth death. " " The wages of sin is death. " 



THE END, 



INDEX. 



Abstinence, total, 14-16 

Adulteration, 47 

Affectation, 86, 87 

Alcibiades, on personal appear- 
ance, 22 

Ambition, true and false, 164 

Amusement. 28 ; seeking, 30 

Animals, 98 

Anxiety, 63 

Aristotle, on friendship, 137 ; on 
pleasure, 187 

Arnold. M., on insincerity, 105 ; 
on " quiet work," 39 

Art, 89 

Asceticism, 12 

Bashfulness, 106 

Beauty, 90, 92 ; how to cultivate 
the love of, 91 ; ideal of, 89 

Benevolence, 118 

Betrayal, 141 

Betting, a form of gambling, 78 

Brothers, duties of, 145 

Browning, Mrs. E. B., on self- 
centered virtue, 192 

Browning, Robert, on strength, 
72 ; on love. 115 

Building and loan associations, 42 

Caird, John, on morality and re- 
ligion, 198 

Carelessness, 68, 69 

Carlyle, Thomas, on human fel- 
lowship, 156 ; on work, 32 

Character, 182, 184 

Charity, if 8 

Cheating, 48 



Childhood, 40 

Children, duty of, to their parents, 

145 
Civilization rests on law, 161 
Coleridge, S. T., on kindness to 

animals, 101 
Confidence, 56 
Conflict of duties, 191 
Conscience, absolute authority of, 

181 
Conscientiousness, 180, 182 
Constraint, 176 
Co-operation, 170 ; two kinds of, 

171 
Co-ordination, 60 
Courage, 73, 75 ; moral, 74 
Cowardice, moral, 76 ; the shame 

of, 79 
Craik, Mrs. D. M., on marriage, 

147 
Cruelty, 102, 103 
Cynicism regarding appearance, 21 

Death, the wages of sin, 202 
Debility, the penalty of neglected 

exercise, 31 
Debt, 43 

Devotion of husband and wife, 152 
Discord, 64 
Disease, 17, 18 
Dishonesty, 49 
Dissipation, 193 
Dissoluteness, 193 
Divorce, 148 
Dress, 19, 20, 21 
Drink, 9 
Drunkenness, 13 



205 



2o6 



INDEX. 



Dude, the, 23 

Duties, conflict of, 191 

Duty, 2, 187 

Economy, 42 

Effusiveness, 142 

Eliot, George, on sympathy, no ; 

on happiness, 188 
Emerson, R. W., on friendship, 

140, 143 
Energy, the value of superfluous, 

26 
Ennui, 30 

Enjoyment, the only true, 86 
Epicurus, on the duty of friends, 

*39 

Equivalence in trade, 46 
Ethics, 1 

Ethics and religion, 196 
Example, responsibility for, 15 
Exchange, 46 
Excitement, 27 
Exclusiveness, 142 
Exercise, necessity of, 25 

Faith, 200 

Falsehood, the forms of, 57 
Family, the, 144 
Fastidiousness, 23 
Fellowship, 104 
Food, 9 

Foolhardiness, 77 
Forgiveness, 130 
Formalism, 190 
Fortune, 70 

Freedom is complete self-expres- 
sion, 173 
Friendship, 137 

Gambling, 78 

Games, value of, 26 

God 194 

Golden Rule, the, 107 

Gossip, the mischievousness of, 57 

Gluttony, 13 

Habit, 3 
Harmony, 90 



Hegel, on duty in personal rela- 
tions, 2 
Heredity, 51 

Hill. Octavia, on benevolence, 120 
Holiness, 196 
Hume, 149, 150 
Honesty, 47 
Hospitality. 105 
Husband and wife, 149 
Hypocrisy, 105-201 

Ideal of Beauty, 89 
Idleness, 33 

Independence, 150, 151, 152 
Indorsing notes, 50 
Indiscriminate charity, 125 
Individualism, 150, 153, 154 
Industry, 35 
Isolation, 143 

Janet, Paul, on dissipation, 193 
Justice, 128 

Kant, on humanity an end, 106 ; 
on importance of social relations, 
109 ; on a lie, 59 ; on universal- 
ity as test of conduct, 169 

Keats on beauty, 93 

Kindness, 100 

Knowledge, 53 

Law, uniformity of, 70 

Laziness, the slavery of, 37 ; leads 
to poverty, 39 

Lenity, 134, 135 ; its effect on the 
offender, 135 

Life insurance, 42 

Loneliness, 156 

Love, 106, 107, 108, in 

Lowell, J. R., on success, 173 

Loyalty, 148 

Luxury, the perversion of beauty, 
93 

Lying, 58, 59 

Marriage, viii, ix, 146, 153 
Marshall, J., on conformity to rule, 

191 
Martineau, on censonousness, 58 



INDEX. 



207 



Maudsley, on hereditary effects of 

dishonesty, 51 
Meanness, 51, 174, 175. 177 
Mill, John Stuart, on pleasure, 187; 

unity with fellow-men, 108 
Miserliness, 44, 45 
Moral courage, 74 
Moroseness, 29 
Morris, William, on simplicity of 

life, 92 

Nature, 81 
Neatness, 20 
Niggardliness, 124 
Notes, indorsement of, 50 

Obscenity, viii 

Obtuseness, 86, 87 

Officiousness, 176 

Old age, provision for, 40 

Opium habit, 16 

Orderliness, 66 

Organization, the function of the 

state. 157 
Overwork, the folly of, 38 

Parents, duties of, to children, 
vi, 145 

Party, political, 160 

Patriotism, 160 

Peace, 198 

Perfection, 90 

Place for everything, 65 

Plato, on virtue and vice, 6 ; refu- 
tation of the Cynic, 22 ; on obe- 
dience to laws, 159 

Pleasure, 71, 186 

Politeness, 172 

Politician, and statesman, 161 

Potter, Bishop, on giving, 119 

Poverty, the causes of, 117 

Pride, 142 

Prigs, 182 

Procrastination, 62 

Profit-sharing, 170 

Property, 40 

Prudence, 61 

Public spirit, 171 



Punishment, the function of, 128 ; 

good for the wrong-doer, 129 
Purity, viii 

Quackery, 49 

Raffling, a form of gambling, 78 

Red-tape, 68 

Reformation, 131 

Reformer, 170 ; Religion, 195, 198 

Religion and ethics, 196, 199 

Reward of virtue, 4 

Rich, the idle, 33 

Rights, our own, 50 ; of others, 

158 

Royce, J., on regarding others as 

persons, 107, 169 
Rules, 183, 191 
Ruskin, John, on the home, 150 ; 

on truth, 54 

Saving, systematic, 41, 43 
Savings-banks, 42 
Scandal, the mischievousness of, 57 
Scott, Sir Walter, on deceit, 56 
Selfishness, 112 ; the penalty of, 

115 

Self-indulgence, 192 

Self-interest, 174 

Self-obliteration for the sake of 

family, 154, 155 
Self-realization, 179 
Self-righteousness, 192 
Self-will, 200 
Sensuality, ix 
Sentimentality, 113, 114 
Severity, 133, 135 ; effect of, on 

the offender, 135 
Sexual passions, vii 
Shakespeare, on music, 95 
Simplicity of life, 92 
Sin, 201 

Sisters, duties of, 145 
Slavery, 178 
Slovenliness, 22, 23 
Social ideal, 170 
Society, 167 
Social responsibility, 15 



208 



INDEX. 



Socrates, on obedience to law, 159 

Soft places, to be avoided, 36 

Space, 65 

Speculation, a form of gambling, 79 

Spencer, Herbert, on abundant 
energy, 27 ; on deficient energy, 
29 

Spendthrift, the, 45 

Spinoza, on the difficulty of excel- 
lence, 97 

Spiritual life, the reward of right- 
eousness, 198 

" Spoils system," 162 

Sports, value of, 26 

Stagnation, 87 

State, developed out of the family, 

157 
Statesman and politician, 161 
Stealing, 48 
Stoicism, 71, no 
Strength, the secret of, 72 
Strife, the penalty of selfishness, 

115 

Success, 173 

Superiority to fortune, the secret 

of, 71 
Sympathy, 123 
System, 66, 67 

Temperance, 10-15 
Temptation, 5 

Terence, oneness of individual with 
humanity, 106 



Time, 60 
Tobacco, 16, 17 

Trade, importance of learning a, 
34 

, equivalence in, 46 

Tranquillity, 39 
Treason, 163 
Truth, 53, 54 

Ugliness, 94 
Unscrupulousness, 189 

Vengeance, 131, 132 

Veracity, 55 

Vice, 5 

Virtue, 3 

Vulgarity, akin to laziness, 96 

Wastefulness, 44, 45 

Wealth, 36 

Well-being, the conditions of, 118 

Whitman, Walt, on the feelings of 
animals, 99 

Whittier, J. G., on acting contrary 
to convictions, 79 

Wife v and husband, 149 

Woman's sphere, 34 

Wordsworth, on books, 53 ; on 
courage, 75 ; on the influence of 
Nature, 82, 83, 84 ; on neglect- 
ing Nature, 85 ; on cruelty to 
animals, 102 

Work, 32, 35 



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